This Group Pays Bounties to Repair Broken Devices—Even if the Fix Breaks the Law

Fulu sets repair bounties on consumer products that employ sneaky features that limit user control. Just this week, it awarded more than $10,000 to the person who hacked the Molekule air purifier.

Companies tend to be rather picky about who gets to poke around inside their products. Manufacturers sometimes even take steps that prevent consumers from repairing their device when it breaks, or modifying it with third-party products.

But those unsanctioned device modifications have become the raison d'être of a bounty program set up by a nonprofit called Fulu, or Freedom from Unethical Limitations on Users. The group tries to spotlight the ways companies can slip consumer-unfriendly features into their products, and offer cash rewards in the thousands of dollars to anyone who can figure out how to disable unpopular features or bring discontinued products back to life.

“We want to be able to show lawmakers, look at ...