Comment Re:uhhh (Score 1) 545
Remind me since when do we trust big companies to set anything right to protect their customers from outside threats.
The change that they made in this case is provably more secure than leaving it as it was. Default router passwords have allowed for at least one *large* scale phishing incident of a major bank in the last few years. All it took to accomplish was an emailed link and default router passwords. I wouldn't trust them to babysit my kids, but it's pretty hard to fuck up the implementation of TR-69.
Also I wouldn't leave out the possibility that they're getting all sorts of data concerning their customers' LAN, to target them for advertising for, say, faster networks, or TV set-top boxes like the Roku player if they notice a lot of video streaming
You can look up a list of the data types monitored by the TR-69 system. I've seen a dump of the standard data fields and most are benign and frankly only useful for network management.
That does not preclude them from implementing their own variables to send back but most of the data you've described is pretty easily captured off the wire from the WAN of their router or any other you use.