this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2024
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Not the person you were replying too, but I was there when we had modems and raw-dogged the internet.
The average person clicks "Yes" on everything without reading it, has no idea what a firewall is, and they never update anything unless it does it without asking.
Having things accessible from outside your network is great if you're a network nerd and that's what you want, but most people are going to be in a world of unprotected shit. Especially in a world of pointlessly online devices. I don't trust any of those fuckers to have their shit in order.
I would assume/hope the default setting for a consumer router would still be to drop incoming connections. That should suffice for the average person as long as ISPs don't make it easy to disable that without actually understanding what the consequences are.
I would also assume that to be the default, but unfortunately the first Google search for "why doesn't my smart fridge work from my phone when I leave the house" will be a set of instructions for turning that feature off.
NATs and port forwarding is annoying, but it's also very manual, and only lets you fuck up one device at a time.
Then the instructions are bad. They should be how to open the firewall port for that device, which is almost the same as setting a NAT port forward, with the same limitation of only exposing one device.
Yeah, but that's going to involve knowing what the device is called on the router, or knowing what the address is.
I'm afraid the great age of computer literacy has come and gone.
If anything it makes me want routers to not even allow a blanket whitelist for all devices...
I would be fine with this. Make it as annoying as possible so people don't blindly follow a guide to disable the firewall.
Remove firewall disable option, and only allow it to happen by DMZ or bridging to another router that would have it.
Require calling in to an ISP help desk, where they ask why you want to do that, and explain in no uncertain terms that you're probably going to open a portal to hell or summon cthulhu. If you still want to, you have to read them out the device serial number, read out a unique code in the router admin interface, and wait a week for the option to become available.