Netgear Adds Dark Web Monitoring to Armor Router Plans

The service is delivered through the Netgear app and is available to existing subscribers of the two paid plans. It joins a set of tools Netgear already bundles with Armor, which include protection against malware and exploits, detection and blocking of intrusion attempts, anomalies and DDoS attacks, and a VPN with ad blocking and anti-tracking functions.

According to TechRadar, the monitoring covers email addresses, phone numbers and financial details lost in data breaches, along with National Insurance numbers. When matching data is found, the service sends an alert and recommends actions for the user to take. It also assigns an Identity Protection Score to show how exposed a household is, and tracks changes as users tighten their security settings.

The feature is priced as part of the existing subscriptions rather than sold separately. Armor costs $99 a year and Armor Plus costs $149.99 a year, both purchased through the Netgear app. Netgear's own description of the service places it alongside the company's other home network protection products.

Jonathan Oakes, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Netgear's Home Networking Division, said the risk often sits outside the home. "Most people think about network security as something that happens within their home," he said. "But your details can end up exposed somewhere else entirely, in a breach at a company you've never even dealt with directly. Dark Web Monitoring means finding out while there's still time to act."

The dark web is the part of the internet reachable through anonymising tools such as Tor. It hosts legitimate activity, including access to resources by dissidents, but also functions as a marketplace for data taken from companies, organizations and governments in hacking campaigns. TechRadar cited expert analysis showing that more than 15 billion personal records are available for purchase there.

Under many jurisdictions, organizations are required to notify people whose data is stolen, but notification can lag or never arrive, particularly when a breached company does not know an intrusion has occurred. Free services can surface records from publicly disclosed leaks, while paid monitoring is aimed at information that has been taken but not yet acknowledged. The gap between a breach and its disclosure is the window Netgear's service is designed to cover, the report said.