Updated to the latest Orbi firmware and enabled the trial of armour. Today the router is blocking my access to legitimate websites falsly claiming they are phishing sites. I canot see any way to remove the armour service or educate it to the error of its ways Barring a factory reset on my orbi system how can I get rid of this?

I tried it and I agree—there's nothing special here, and it's definitely not worth $70/year (maybe for a non-power user, or a senior citizen, I can see this being useful). So I found this thread as I was trying to turn it off—and I found it. I can't speak to all of the possibilities, but I couldn't find it anywhere in the web interfaces (and the Armor web interface is complete dung). So, I dug into the app. On the Orbi app for iOS, you can disable Armor by drilling though the settings (presumably the Android app and the Nighthawks have similar settings). Go to the home icon in the upper left, then tap settings, then tap Security, and there should then be a toggle to Enable NETGEAR Armor. Just turn the toggle off, like so:

Factory reseting won't get rid of the Netgear Armour. It automatically reloads and activates itself during the factory reset process. And all those malicious sites that were previously blocked buy Armour (like the Apple App Store, Directv, Netflix, and more) continue to be blocked. Basically Netgear infected their customer's equipment with malicious software. Now I'm hoping Armour will stop working after the trial period ends a week from now and I can regain use of the router. It it doesn't go away (and I wouldn't be surprised if ransom is demanded), I'll have to buy a new router. You can safely bet it won't be made by Netgear.

There doesn't appear to be a consensous on how to restore settings pre-Armor trial (even a factory reset may not work). AND it appears NetGear wants at least $80 to provide support to uninstall the firmware it encouraged be installed on a trial basis. I'm an attorney and this is classic fraudulent inducement, which voids any warranty disclaimers and can result in punitive damages, even in arbitration. I'm ripping this piece of #$** off of my network, and then will file suit in a small claims court. May not win but they will spend more defending this than the $80 they are attempting to extort. Lesson learned. Used to be a pretty good company (although support was always suspect) from what i can tell.

I would still like to know how to disable Armor, but I am feeling much more kindly to it now. I was being flooded with alerts about phishing, but nothing told me the URL until I happened across the misnamed "Support" link on the Netgear site that took me to a web page version of the Armor control panel. Then if I examined the alerts it gave the domain. NONE of the controls in the Orbi app or the router's admin page showed me this. Once I had the domain, I was eventually able to identify a Chrome extension I had used for a long time that, it would seem, had been hijacked and turned into malware. (HTML5 Autoplay Blocker) Armor may in fact be a useful feature, but the implementation and User Interface is horrible!

i WANT TO KNOW ALSO ! THIS IS COMPLETE GARBAGE, I AM ON HOLD RIGHT NOW GETTING TERRIBLE SERVICE FROM NETGEAR.

How do I remove this garbage from my router?

84 Replies

Nobodynew
Aspirant
Nov 09, 2021
Nobodynew
Aspirant
Nov 09, 2021
Everyone forgets to tell you that when you unplug the router you need to open the nighthawk app hit the home button and open settings, wait until the WiFi it’s up before the router has established a cloud connection ( the internet ) open the anywhere access and disable it!!!! Only then can you open the security tab and turn the switch off for nether armor, I don’t have time to reset my world personally . Hope this helps next time
nooneeverywhere
Initiate
Jan 14, 2022
unable to disable armor (errors out because it took more 60 sec) trying to allow the site (error please try again... same error)
- CaptHindsight
  Aspirant
  Jan 14, 2022
  Try flushing your DNS cache to see if you can reach the site inside of the timeout window. This timeout error could be a plethora of connectivity issues; but, to flush your cache on a Windows PC:
  Press Windows key + R
  Type ‘CMD’ and press enter to open command prompt CLI
  Type: ipconfig /flushdns and press enter
  Try to reach the landing page again

Forum Discussion

How do I remove this garbage from my router?