Router sending device names to sky.com

Hi all,

Is there anyway to turn sky seeing decides connected to my router off in the settings as I don't really want sky showing that in my sky account.

Other than buying a 3rd party router?

I just got this installed today and haven't had time to look about the settings

Do the devices connected show up somewhere in your online Sky account or is it just via the router interface? I'm not with Sky but have never heard of an ISP taking that sort of information from a router to display in an online account - can't see any purpose or benefit of doing it.

Yes Ian, if I login to my sky all connected devices are there

Also shows each devices internal ip's and mac addresses

Edited by Hothead17 (Wed 05-Aug-20 12:29:25)

Is this part of a Sky service such as something that allows you to set restrictions on specific devices?

I was thinking that since they have a "shield" thing to control access times, websites and apps.

So unsure if turning off the sheild stops that

This isn't unusual, many providers whom supply their own router equipment have the ability to see how it is performing and what is connected to it. Vodafone with their router are able to connect to the router remotely and determine a number of things. Its there to help with diagnostics in the event of a fault or something not working as it should.

Yes, remote diagnostics is one thing but surfacing the names of all the devices in the web portal is entirely different.

Yea I get that but preferably stored so only the support reps can see rather than any random person if they were to get into my account.

And should be able to be disabled by customers who don't want to give that information

Edited by Hothead17 (Wed 05-Aug-20 14:39:54)

I wondered about shield when I saw it earlier on a google but couldn't tell if it was a setting for the line or whether it went down to individual devices.

To be honest I'm not sure only went live today and not been home to tinker yet

Large reason for this, is skys portal facilitates the device name, and the WiFi signal strength. Sky use this info to inform the customer "hey you have poor signal on your fire tv stick, your samsung tv etc" and if you have the WiFi guarantee will agree to send an engineer to install their WiFi extenders.

It also enables them to assist customers who do not have the WiFi guarantee, to say "hey did you know the following devices have a poor signal, this may be your issue with buffering etc etc, if you opt in we can fix this for you."

If all devices show a strong signal, the agent knows the issue isn't covered under the WiFi guarantee and will begin troubleshooting other methods.

It also allows you to setup timers on specific devices and parental controls, should you wish. Eg. kids ipad not online after 11pm.

AFAIK - no way to turn this off. Interestingly, Comcast now own sky, a US company with over 20 million cable customers, likewise they capture device info and offer up a whole bunch of control in their app.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Thu 06-Aug-20 02:01:12)

Thanks for the informative reply.

Sounds reasonable but the user should be able to disable it if they don't want it.

I do wonder if a non sky router would disable sky getting that information.

It will since they only have access to the information since the router sees all this data as part of its job as a router. With your own router you lock Sky out essentially.

Always keep ISP router though as needed for testing if there is a fault