I wanted to change my Wi-Fi password since my landlord and I could not remember it (had been a while) and wanted to create a new one, so tried to go into router settings, was blocked. Then reset my router and tried again, can’t login. And was thoroughly stumped called Chunghwa Telecom. Apparently, you can’t login into router settings anymore without a technician per policy of Chunghwa telecom they told me around September this year. So I basically have to wait for a technician to come now to restore internet. Doesn’t matter if you go into the store, doesn’t matter if you have every document in the world. If you move from the 8th floor to the 7th floor and want to change your WIFI name or password from 8FL to 7FL, ONLY CHT TECHNICIAN can do it. This is apparently labeled as a security measure enacted in September.
That’s weird. I didn’t believe it, but I just tried logging in to my router using the previous username and password and got a “password incorrect” error.
Seems like overreach from Chunghwa, especially if they didn’t notify customers (did they? I can’t claim that I pay attention to the monthly bills). I should be able to change my own password and the other settings if I want to…
Try these, or search local forums, usually someone will have the latest login details.
Have you tried just asking them to enable bridge mode?
If they can remote in to change the password for themselves, surely they can do it for the customer without having to send out an engineer.
(they may have done it as part of a software update, but that just means it was vulnerable in the first place).
I think they probably did it to stop people messing with the setting then complaining when they brake it. but you really should have control of your own passwords even if the rest is controlled by a separate admin account.
How did you try to go into router settings?
I was also surprised that now these settings are configured and accessed through a mobile app, instead of directly connecting to the router server through its DHCP server.
Maye there is a security reasoning behind it, and it’s definitely a better UX assuming that everyone has a mobile phone of course 
But what I find concerning is that by using the app I’m not sure if my app is talking directly to my router to set the password or is it going through CHT servers before reaching my router 
Also if CHT login servers are down will my app prevent me from changing my password? (very likely yes)
Sigh.
So a few months ago when we upgraded our account, I spent some time setting up PiHole again. And everything was working perfectly until last night when suddenly it wasn’t. The home network was fine, and all devices were connecting to it and could see and talk to each other, but no traffic could get in or out. The only device I couldn’t login to was the PiHole box itself (a Raspberry Pi 3b), which means it was busted, or maybe its IP address had changed. One way or the other, it wasn’t where it should have been on the network.
See, back when I set PiHole up, I had changed the settings in the Little Turtle (the magical black Internet box CHT gives you) to direct all traffic though the PiHole, which decides what can and can’t get through. So now everything was either being sent to a broken device, or to the wrong IP address.
I tried logging in to the Turtle, using the ‘cht’ account which had always worked, and suddenly came up against their new security layer - the QR code which provides technicians with a passcode to get into the settings.
A phone call to CHT yielded no results; nothing from the outside world was getting in. So we’ve just had a weary technician come round and set everything up again.
So when I’ve got the time and the energy, I’ll have to setup PiHole again. Anyone here have experience with this?
Will that happen everytime or did he set you up so you could do it yourself next time?
Ah I realise I wasn’t clear the first time.
He set up the modem again so that it worked. He wouldn’t attach the PiHole again; said I need to sort something else out. Which I suppose is fair - the next time they do a firmware update, it screws up again and they have to send someone round to sort things out. Hardly a productive use of their time.
I’ve been looking at local forums trying to find people who’ve experienced similar issues, what their workarounds have been. I’ll hit up Jippity5 and see what it has to say. I imagine the solution will involve my own router and bridge mode on CHT’s modem.
This seems like it will be a Chinese New Year kind of problem, though. Having said that, it is jarring visiting websites without PiHole active and seeing just how overrun htey are with advertising. I generally don’t visit websites when I’m on my phone out the house, so I hadn’t realised how awful it has become.
Anyone have any recommendations and experience with their own routers?
is the QR code static or does it change each day? Or is it unique per device, if you can check that?
My bet is they’ve rolled out a “password of the day” situation which means although the password changes daily, it is the same for everyone.
And in turn, i’m guessing they’ve done that because compromising routers makes a pretty decent botnet.
The HiNet cat’s phone generated a 6-digit number when he pointed it at the QR code. I tried memorizing it and when he’d gone I tried logging back in to the ‘cht’ account with the number I’d tried to memorize. It didn’t work, so either the code changes each time, or I’m a thicky who can’t remember 6 numbers. Or both.
Six digit number, you say? Unfortunate how secure those are. You could spend all day manually typing in random numbers and there’d never be any chance that you’d get it right.
Shame there’s no other way. Nope, such shame.
On to the next thread in Forumosa, I suppose.
lol, yup, truly the most sophisticated of security measures. I think you also have to pinky-swear you won’t try to bypass the measures in place.
Having said that, just getting to the second password takes a bit of doing. The ‘cht’ engineers’s account in the modem requires a password with the last four digits of the modem’s MAC address plus some other stuff. And if you pooch it, you’re locked out from trying again for three or five minutes or so.
But no doubt some enterprising young buck will reverse engineer the whole thing and post the solution online.
In the meantime, it’s an ad-filled surfing experience out there. Seems I’ve been targeted with ads for housing, AI tools, and generously proportioned anime waifs.
There are free DNS providers that block ad domains. You can point your devices or browser to it meanwhile.
Do you have any experience with any of them?
Personally I use Control D.
Another popular one is
https://nextdns.io
You don’t need to use the paid version. But I ditched Pi-Hole for paid Control D plan. More convenient and offers more features.
I also like the per device control and geo unlocking blocked content by using auto proxy for specific domains.
Cheers, thanks for the recommendations! Appreciate it. I’ll have a closer look at those (300,000 free queries for NextDNS? Based on how often some services - icloud, Microsoft - are checking in at home, this could be like a couple days’ worth!). But the paid stuff is crazy cheap as well - how do you set up your endpoints? Per device, or one for your home network, or something else?
I set up my main router to use encrypted DoH with legacy IP as fall back. This is a catch all for those devices that can not be configured to point to a custom DNS. Then every device and even browser get their own endpoint. This way I can look into monitoring for a specific issue on a specific device. Helps find (rare) false positives faster or identify some ad domains that have not been added to block list yet.
Each endpoint can use up to 2 profiles.
The first profile is a general one that every device (endpoint) is using. Basically things that I want to block/redirect everywhere.
Then I have different profiles for fine grained control, like family, kids, work.
So I set the second profile based on the device’s intended usage.
Very granular control indeed. Thanks for the info!