Cursed site is auto playing a video that isnt even visible when on mobile.
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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This. Jesus fuck I thought I was going insane for a minute. Awful design.
wow, CNET has really gone to shit, hasn't it?
three popups, including a full screen, autoplaying video, and banner
guess that's going on my blocklist
They always sucked, they used to have a list of some software that I used and downloading through them inevitably got you multiple.other prompts for third party shit and random download buttons.
They've been bought out and gutted a couple times over. It's very sad
Totally off topic, but I was reading the article on Fennec (mobile Firefox clone) while playing music over Bluetooth to my car. I was parked waiting for someone, not driving. No streaming service, playing honest to god mp3s from my device, when out of the blue I got VPN ads over the speaker.
Fennec indicated that cnet was playing them, but there as was no video box or other audio player widget active, so it looks like they are splicing invisible audio ads in somehow?
I'm also using ublock origin on mobile plus AdAway (rooted), so that's not an easy feat.
Could anyone double check? That's the most obnoxious behavior I've experienced in recent time.
Are you sure there wasn't a video at the top or bottom of the web page? What you were listening to is kind if irrelevant, since if some other media starts playing it'll pause whatever media was playing before.
Nope there wasn't anything visible, I've been scrolling up and down to verify. Unless the video was somehow truncated or scaled to 1x1 px or something.
Fennec (mobile Firefox clone)
It's not a Firefox clone, it is Firefox.
It's a clone of the official Firefox repo stripped of all telemetry.
Using Firefox focus and zenarmour on my firewall. Same problem.
I'll do some digging in the code and see if I can come up with a custom filter for ublock.
Using Firefox. I just had this same experience (- the car) but yeah, I couldn't find any vid to stop. I ended up just muting the phone
I used the volume controls for the website in my phone's pulldown menu to stop it, then the music player resumed. Still very much unwanted behavior. Will dig into the page source and see if there's anything hidden.
- goverment warns about Wifi network secuirty
- PRISIM exists.
Billionaires buying children exist.
We don't stand for Chinese surveillance in this country. Our surveillance shall be domestically produced or GTFO.
while understandable, if i was american i might actually prefer surveillance by foreign country. At least if i was part of group in danger like lqbt.
Yeah, the worst case is they use it to influence elections. US surveillance will do that and look for "illegal" activity —for some fucked up definition of illegal.
For example, in my state you need to give your ID to sites to look at porn. Fuck that. I don't trust those sites with that kind of data, even if I trusted that they were trying to keep it private (which I don't). I use a VPN to avoid this, but I'm not really sure on the legal status of that.
Also, my political views don't really align with the current administration (or any for that matter, but especially the current one). They've already made indications they'd come after people who hold opinions like mine. I trust China won't send people after me, but I'm not sure about the US.
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Yep, Google WiFi or Amazon Eero only. Those two definitely don’t have an incentive to log your network traffic or anything.
they want palintir to do it.
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Maybe because the US agencies have just not found their own backdoors into them...
Good. TPLink makes cartoonishly insecure consumer grade equipment. A better solution is that the US establishes some minimum infosec standards for this equipment, but that would require time and thought.
Do you have any information to share about their bad security? I have a couple of their routers which seem to work quite well. Any I really at risk, and anymore than I would be with something from Linksys or Netgear?
Here are two new vulnerabilities from this month.
Here are some more exploits from 2023
Here are all the TPLink vulnerablies known publicly
Am I really at risk, and anymore than I would be with something from Linksys or Netgear?
As always, depends on your threat model. I have cheap TPLink switch in my home network because its cheap and kept behind a pfsense firewall. The TPLink switch is not allowed to talk to the internet. This is good enough for me as I don't have a threat model where something attacks the switch from inside my network.
For completeness here are Cisco's and Netgear's vulnerabilities. Infosec security is a journey, not a destination.
Thank you for that! I'm keeping the cvedetails link bookmarked.
My two devices, the Archer BE9300 router and the TL-WA3001 AP aren't listed with any known vulnerabilities, though I suppose it may be they haven't been tested. The BE9300 is pretty popular though so that would be surprising.
The known vulnerabilities in their other devices don't appear malicious or any worse than other common vendors either however. Given the state of the US government and its desire to monitor it's citizens, I can't decide if it's contempt for TP-Link is a bad thing or not. They might just be mad they can't get the vendor to give them a backdoor.
I will add the following:
US was looking at this before Trump took office (Dec 2024)
https://www.itpro.com/security/the-us-could-be-set-to-ban-tp-link-routers
TP Link's sloppy security lead to the creation of a Chinese botnet.
https://cybernews.com/security/chinese-hackers-hijacked-thousands-of-tp-link-wifi-routers/
Replace the firmware on your current TPLink devices with OpenWRT, for a temporary solution.
A solution to what exactly? Nobody has provided any information about definitive risks.
An as OpenWRT goes it would either be a permanent solution or no solution at all. How would it be temporary?
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OpenWRT is a permanent solution for older TP-Link routers. Their newer routers are locked down and not supported by OpenWRT.
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TP-Link is excellent for cheap switching hardware which a ton of vendors overprice for the same quality. Its your OG made in China deal that works pretty well for the price.
Otherwise, you should skip it as a router and instead opt for either a better AIO, or put in the 2 minutes of extra effort to get a cheap ethernet router and a separate AP because AIOs are still overrated in 2025 for the price per quality.
Not to mention that 5 GHz channels are getting clogged these days even on the DFS channels which people shouldn't be using all the time. I know its not possible for a lot of people, but you're really better off on even bargain basement maximum cheapo Cat-5e cables.
Gb WiFi speeds and MuMIMO not gonna matter when you have CSMA/CA throwing a metric ton of RTS and CTS packets causing increasing amounts of retries as you add stations.
Probably worst scenario is if you're living in an apartment surrounded by like 50 stations within range. No amount of 802.11 magic is gonna give you a stable connection.
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Do Americans not have FritzBox routers for that crap to be the most popular router?
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And here I've been just avoiding TP Link garbage for over 2 decades because it's one of the shittiest brands around. I'd go with Belkin before TP Link. And Belkin also sucks.
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Considering they recently also complained about Mikrotik I would,well, not give to much merit on that shit.
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TP Link is the Temu of routers. For decades they have been the “cheaper router” and it shows.
Bullshit.
It depends on what you buy from them and always has been. Their Omada line is on par with Ubiquiti, some other gear is similar to other commercial grade gear.
If you buy their cheap shit, yeah,it's cheap. But they,as most manufacturers, have a broad spectrum..
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Low Level Learning has a good video in TP-Link. Even if they aren’t malicious, they have refused to fix obvious exploits for decades.
Well, they have had a lot of vulnerabilities. Most people won't even update the firmware let alone install OpenWRT on them.
That's more an user issue than a product issue though.
Get a Protectlii vault with opnSense. Not horribly expensive and very very secure.
A possible ban on TP-Link routers -- one of the most popular router brands in the US -- is gaining momentum, as more than half a dozen federal departments and agencies back the proposal, according to a Washington Post report on Thursday
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