Netgear says that the data collection is to help it “isolate and debug technical issues” and does not — according to the company — include details such as the websites that are visited, but it will still be a cause of concern for many people. It’s hard not to draw parallels with Windows 10 which has managed to upset many users with its telemetry settings.
The data that’s being collected by Netgear is what many people would consider to be personal information, but the company makes no apologies for the firmware update. It is possible to disable the telemetry, but it remains to be seen how many people are aware of how this can be done — or, indeed, how many know that the new settings exist.
