I’m looking to get a new router, but all of the ones I’ve found try to force a mandatory internet connection/account creation to activate them without any bypass methods (at least that my searching could find).
Is there any way to get a new router to work without connecting an account to it? Or a way to bypass it? If not, is there a specific used router that might be more privacy friendly?
I don’t need anything special, it’s just home wifi.
I’ve been thinking about GL.iNet routers. They have OpenWRT-based firmware, and it seems typically can also run vanilla OpenWRT.
Just found them on proxysto.re when looking at physical Mullvad vouchers, and regretting getting that on Amazon for (slightly) more money and with slower shipping.
I have one. It’s great. It has a very user-friendly UI that lets you do most things without having to mess with the bare openwrt interface. I have mullvad on it and it works flawlessly.
Happy to add another data point, I have a Flint 2 and it’s awesome. Whole-house VPN via Mullvad supplied config file, just uploaded to the router using the given config interface…I’d buy it again for the convenience of that alone, and that only scratches the surface of what this thing does out of the box (via the trusted OpenWRT, to boot).
Just be careful if you get to tinkering, if privacy is your focus, wouldn’t want to accidentally misconfigure some random capability it has that you’re just playing around with.