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Comment by bmarquez | Hacker News Reader

Teamviewer has a terrible reputation.

I dropped Teamviewer after they sent threatening emails claiming I violated their EULA. I got emails falsely claiming I was using it for commercial use, when I hadn't logged in for months. Ended up switching to Anydesk, which doesn't require an account to set up (meaning they can't spy on me or "analyse my use" as per the email below)

>WARNING: Possible Violation of EULA

>We’re contacting you as part of a license audit in accordance with paragraph 3.9 of the TeamViewer End User License Agreement (EULA). The EULA regulates the use of TeamViewer software, and by downloading TeamViewer, you have accepted the terms of our EULA.

>Based on an analysis of your TeamViewer account usage, we have detected possible use in a commercial context. As our EULA states, a paid license is required for commercial use.

View on HN

I second to this. I had been a loyal customer to their service since Teamviewer 5, recommending friends and family to use the service due to the snappiness and ease to use interface. Then I got struck by the notorious COMMERCIAL DETECTED thingy and will disconnect my session every minute or 5 or straight up won't work at all.

At first, an appeal fixed that rather quickly, but after 5 similar incidents in just 2 years around Teamviewer 14, they straight up deemed my personal account as commercial even though I bought the commercial version on my work computer and strictly use my personal computer as, well, personal. After a few emails back and forth, I was very frustrated about how I'm wrongly accused for something I didn't do. So my wise choice was to ditch it and head to the Zerotier + VNCServer ever since.

Recently I stumbled upon this gaming streaming called Rainway, and are quite fascinated by their approach. The stream is smooth and I might use then more.

(I'm not affliated to any companies mentioned above, this is a personal opinion and not a sales pitch.)

Edit: spacings

I'm pretty curious what activity they consider a commercial context. Many personal-only users probably use TeamViewer on a corporate-owned/domain-joined PC to access their personal computers from work. A decent number of personal users may even have their own domains for their home networks. And me helping a bunch of friends and family with their computers might not be significantly distinguishable from a tech support company connecting to customers.

I stopped using TeamViewer after getting hit with the COMMERCIAL USE DETECTED popup multiple times. I did exactly two things with it:

- For a few days, I maintained a connection between my personal Linux desktop and my personal Windows sidearm, because I was using both simultaneously and didn't want to shift back and forth on my desk every 2 minutes.

- Every now and then, connected to my mom's personal laptop, to reset her buggy Bluetooth headset.

That's it. Their heuristics decided I'm a commercial user. I'm guessing it's the first point that tripped them - keeping a connection mostly idle for half a day is probably not a typical thing.

Also pretty cool that AnyDesk is created by the original developers of TeamViewer.

I curious - but how does a company legally prevents its employee from starting a competitor product given that the employee might have insider information?

using a non-compete agreement [1] in the employment contract or as a condition for a severance package, etc.

May or may not be enforceable depending on a million different factors.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause

Since TeamViewer is a German company I looked up the rules for a non-compete clause in Germany (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wettbewerbsverbot#Nach_Beendig...):

1. It can only be valid for up to two years after your employment ends.

2. Your former employer has to continue to pay you at least half of your last salary during the non-compete time.

Point 2 is interesting. From the employer's point of view, it must effectively act as a high tax on non-compete clauses, still stopping short of an outright ban.

It can't. At least not in Germany... Have you ever read the story of SAP?

What is the story? Any links?

They don't. If insider information is suspected, the company can sue, and then prove it in court. See Waymo.

This is infinitely better than automagically preventing employees from being employable after working for a specific company.

Same situation exactly. I tried emailing them to dispute it, or at least try to figure out what supposed "commercial use" they suspected, but nobody ever replied. Plus, I think I may have only ever used it for like 20 minutes a month to do stuff like move a recipe into Dropbox so I could share it with a coworker, or start a Steam game downloading. I guess those 20 minutes a month must have been judged to be critical business use, sufficient to earn a threatening email.

I don't miss them or their service.

Might be that you got flagged for using it from a "business IP".

Same for me. I used Teamviewer 100% to be able to support my dad's PC remotely. I used it for nothing else.

One day - bam - COMMERCIAL USAGE - unable to use it any longer.

Is there a term "Threatware"? Should I coin this term?

> Is there a term "Threatware"?

Yes: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Threatware%22

You may be interested to know that there exists a service called "let me google that for you":

  http://letmegooglethat.com/?q=Threatware

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