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Teamviewer is such a scummy company.
- If you sign up for a TeamViewer license, you have 7 days to cancel and get a refund. This does not apply to renewals.
- Licenses are only available in annual installments.
- TeamViewer’s license recommendation tool may suggest a license that is greater than your actual need. In my case, the cheaper license that best fit my business use case (one session at a time) was not presented during onboarding.
- TeamViewer does not offer mid-term downgrades, but does allow mid-term upgrades.
- You will get a renewal notice 30 days before renewal. TeamViewer requires written notice of cancellation 28 or more days before renewal.
- TeamViewer does not offer the option for mid-term cancellations and will not grant a prorated refund for the remainder of your unused license time. When you cancel, you are only cancelling the next renewal.
We got totally boned when our renewal notice went out just before a three day weekend. PayPal and our bank sided with TeamViewer. Apparently, someone tried to sue over this shady practice in California and the court also sided with TeamViewer. Probably would have dodged this bullet if I had thought to scroll through the TeamViewer subreddit, I went with them because I had positive experiences using the free version for personal use.
Been using RustDesk for years with great success. I especially appreciate the responsible disclosure banners on the main site and GitHub warning users that they might be on the phone with a scam artist.
IMO, all the proprietary remote access software (Teamviewer, Ultraviewer, Anydesk, Etc) companies are profiting from and therefore complicit in the use of their software to scam people.
I never understand the renewal cancellation issue. The company will get the renewal once. If that happens to me I’ll cancel going forward and never work with them again. But if they let me cancel easily I may go back in future.
Switch to RustDesk https://rustdesk.com/
Been using them for years.
It’s completely free, open source and has:
- Unsupervised (for headless servers) or supervised (helping out relatives) access
- Easily file transfers
- Cross-copy paste
- Identification server (what gives out connection IDs) can be self-hosted or you can use theirs for free
- Can control PCs from mobile app (though not vide versa)
- Experimental web browser client.
Damn, I respect the banner at the top warning people about scams. Fair play.
Yeah, that’s got my attention too. Definitely going to try them out now since I need an alternative for remote support for family.
I switched when team viewer had me sign up for fixing my aunts laptop. After that wasn’t working properly I found rustdesk and threw teamviewer straight from both systems.
Anyone know how I can get remote access with my monitors off while using Wayland ? Everytime I log in if I have my monitors off I just get a black screen. I bought one of those dummy HDMI plugs no dice. Works fine with x11 but I don’t want to have to relog every time I get to my computer.
I think when screen recording software (like OBS) request screen recording access, it is an option to create a new virtual screen, in the system dialog when you need to select which window or screen to share. maybe this would help? it could be wasteful with resources, though
Do you know how wasteful? Is there like an actual overhead when running obs, or is it more like Nvidia shadow play or steams recording? Are you actually recording when you have that active or is it just actually creating a virtual screen?
I switched to Rust Desk after I got repeatedly flagged for commercial use of Team Viewer and access disabled. I was doing nothing of the sort, but it happened after I accessed my personal computer on my personal phone while at work. They must have IP address checks that are extremely aggressive.
I followed their process to “verify” I was non-commercial, which was invasive and insulting, and then was flagged again.
Rust Desk works great, no problems, never using Team Viewer again.
I have been flagged three times by teamviewer. Appealing requires writing an email and waiting weeks. This last time my use was consistent and only ever connected to my home computer due about 10 minutes tops.
They just don’t want free users who don’t upgrade to a monthly subscription but will never say that.
Do you (or anyone else) have suggestion for software than can control an android phone from pc?
Rust desk also does it. But Google makes you jump through a bunch of hoops to get it working because of scams.
I switched from nomachine to RustDesk, and I couldn’t be happier. It’s very lightweight, very fast, and has all the features I need. And it’s great that it’s cross platform.
First heard about this a few hears ago- apparently it’s got Wayland support now, including for tiling WMs like sway? Thats super impressive, I’m gonna see if I can get it set up and running real quick because I just gave up on remote access on Sway when I last tried to check out the options.
And the enshittification continues unabated.
If anyone is still using teamviewer after the many breaches they had, they deserve this ;-)
Not only because of the breaches they had, We knew they were breached, they lied about it. Fuck them.
Why would they deserve this?
Not necessarily the users, per sé, but the corporations who refuse to learn from mistakes.
If you’re using a remote access product that is as water right as a fishing net, and have years of history of them fucking around with security (account takeover controversy in 2016, didn’t have default 2fa until 2018), you’re kinda in the neighborhood of getting what you deserve. This is like being on Facebook and complaining that fuckerberg is spying on you and using your data to feed their AI.
If this was still the mid teens, I’d give people a pass. But TeamViewer has been a trash product for longer than my kid has been alive, and anyone still using it should have done their due diligence on the software they chose (negligence doesn’t mean they deserve it, but it’s hard to feel sympathy when they chose to not do the research on a service that has direct access to your systems), or already accepted the risks of using it (so they absolutely deserve it)
negligence doesn’t mean they deserve it
This is why I asked in the first place; negligence == they deserve it seems to be the basis of everyone who has replied to me lol.
It’s also weird to me because everyone is citing awful data protection (numerous data breaches, and even your link to easily compromised credentials) as the reason end users deserves their Licenses being revoked.
I’d agree if this post was about Teamviewer being breached once again. In that case, yes the end users who have stuck with them throughout numerous data breaches have very little room to complain when it happens again. But this is a Licensing change. It has nothing to do with their shitty data protection practices.
Further, these are perpetual licenses. It’s very likely that many of them were purchased years ago when Teamviewer was a lot more popular. To say that people deserve their perpetual licenses getting revoked because a company enshittified over time is silly buddy.
It’s not really about the data breaches themselves but rather the way the company responded to them. The fact they tried to cover it up and gaslight their customers about it shows how terrible they are, and remote access is a highly sensitive thing that should be treated the same as handing the keys to your house over to someone. Anyone that isn’t deeply investigating the company or individual making a remote access product prior to using it does deserve what they get in the same way someone handing the keys to their house to a complete stranger they know nothing about would deserve whatever happened to them.
At the end of the day Teamviewer has a history of screwing over their customers for their own profit and in that regard this move is very much on brand for them and entirely predictable. Nobody that has looked into the company’s history should be surprised that they’ve done this at all.
Anyone that isn’t deeply investigating the company or individual making a remote access product prior to using it does deserve what they get in the same way someone handing the keys to their house to a complete stranger they know nothing about would deserve whatever happened to the
I’ve already agreed with this opinion:
I’d agree if this post was about Teamviewer being breached once again. In that case, yes the end users who have stuck with them throughout numerous data breaches have very little room to complain when it happens again.
But it feels like you may have missed my actual point. Again, this post is about a change to perpetual licensing. People that purchased their license back when TeamViewer was a proprietary alternative to VNC, long before it became obvious that TeamViewer wasn’t a great company, (think 2008), don’t suddenly deserve licensing changes. Hard stop. These are the users that are affected the most by this change because they’ve held their perpetual licenses the longest. In addition, TeamViewer stopped selling perpetual licenses years ago, so the bulk of users with one today are likely to be older users. Why do they suddenly deserve this?
And you missed my actual point. It doesn’t matter when they purchased the license because the fact they’re still using it means they deserve it. Nobody should be using Teamviewer today because they’re a terrible company, and if you aren’t then this license change doesn’t impact you at all.
Yeah even Windows has Quick Assist built in.
