I've had my Eero for a little over a year now and it's a great router. Moving from a Netgear Orbi, I found the interface to be much simpler and more user friendly. I also like that it does automatic updates so I know that it's getting patches and upgrades. It's a great router. However, this review is about its security service, Eero Plus, which has some issues.
First, there used to be 2 tiers. The first tier gave you things like ad blocking, content filtering, and blocking malicious web sites. It also let you assign groups for devices so you could see how much data they were using or how many sites were blocked, etc. for a specific set of users. I thought it was a useful set of features and I didn't mind paying the $20 to $30 a year that it cost.
The second tier had everything the first tier had and added an anti-virus, VPN, and a password manager. All that for $99 per year. I wasn't interested in that - I didn't use those services. So I happily paid for the lower tier.
Well, late last year they combined it all into one service, Eero Plus. So my cheap, useful tier disappeared and was replaced by an expensive service that wasn't any more useful for me. Not cool. Now, as a subscriber, they're giving me the new service for only $50 for the first year. Still more expensive than what I was paying but a lot less painful. I would have dumped it entirely but I recently changed password managers to 1Password which is what Eero Plus offers. Since that made the cost a wash, I decided to keep my subscription. We'll see how I feel next year.
So here I am with Eero Plus securing my network and offering some limited parental controls like content filtering. Pretty nice right? Well, here's the problem: you and I aren't allowed to see what Eero is blocking. For example, it will tell me that it blocked 10 sites in my kids group. As a parent I think, "Oh, did my kids stumble onto something, were they deliberately trying to go where they shouldn't, or is this just a false alarm?" Well, I can't know. Eero doesn't report what was blocked, just that something was blocked. OK, so I have to settle for trusting that Eero will block the bad stuff and I don't have to worry about it. Is that something I'm OK with...?
Well, what happens when a legitimate program stops working? My kids and I enjoy the Nintendo Switch game Just Dance. It was fun enough that I bought the subscription so we could have their whole library of songs (even some of my 80s music). It worked great for a while and then, in the middle of last year, it stopped working. It errored out saying its servers were down. I checked online and even filed a support ticket - their servers weren't off line. Well, if the servers are up but my game console can't get to them, they're being blocked... or maybe filtered. So I started looking at my content filters.
I have two content filters: Circle Parental Controls and Eero. I turned both of their content filters off. Poof! Just Dance gives me back my full music selection. Yay! So which service was the culprit?
First I tried turning my Circle back on. Checked again and yep, everything still worked. It's not the Circle. Then I turned on Eero's content filtering. Bam! Just Dance is erroring out again. Ok, not the end of the world. I can just whitelist Just Dance right? Wrong. You see, the Nintendo Switch doesn't tell you what website Just Dance is trying to get to for your songs. Eero, on the other hand, is blocking the site but it won't tell me what it's blocking. This is a problem. Do I turn off content filtering for my entire network just so one game will start working? That doesn't seem right.
I decided to reach out to Eero support. I emailed them my issue. This is what support sent me:
I understand that you would like to see which URL was blocked and get more information.
Unfortunately, eero does not track the blocked URLs for the security and privacy of the customers.
There is no way to actually see the content, but I can say that is more than likely the Advanced Security feature is blocking the URL.
Advanced security still tries to protect you from threats and things of that nature while connected to the internet.
So, Advanced Security is blocking the site (the URL) - umm... yeah, that's why I emailed. However, for my privacy and security, I can't know what is being blocked. Eero won't tell me what it's blocking but it's for my own safety. Ugh! I'm right back at the beginning.
Well, fortunately, Circle doesn't have this limitation. So I created a group in Circle just for my Nintendo Switch. Then I loaded up Just Dance. The Circle showed me all of the sites that Just Dance uses to connect to my music subscription. There were 4 or 5. I took each of the sites and told Eero to whitelist (not block) them. Poof! Despite Eero's best efforts, Just Dance is working again.
So, if you want comprehensive parental controls - try Circle. It will give you a list of all the sites your kids go to. It will also give you a list of just the sites that were blocked. If a site was blocked that shouldn't have been, you can just tell Circle to whitelist it. Easy! Eero doesn't do any of that.
What Eero does do is block ads and malicious web sites. I think those are very useful functions. Circle doesn't do that.
So what's the answer? I honestly don't know. I'm running both right now and that is not ideal. Circle and Eero don't play well together and Circle monitored devices tend to have really poor internet performance. It's the best I've got right now though.
Here's my recommendation to Eero: Let people see what you're doing. It will make your parental controls much more useful and it will make debugging false positives (sites marked as bad that aren't) a LOT easier. I sure it sounds a lot easier than it is but, by hiding what you're doing, you're actually hurting your customers.
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