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Comment by stormdennis | Hacker News Reader

30 days before your subscription expires, teamviewer send you a friendly email to remind you to that your subscription expires in 30 days and to be sure to renew before then in order to not lose service.

What that email does not tell you is that unless you cancel your subscription at least 30 days (ie on that very day) before your sub expires they will renew you automatically and demand a full year's subscription under threat of legal proceedings.

Personally I believe that the purpose of this email is to lull you into a false sense of security that you can just let your subscription lapse instead of renewing when that is far from the case.

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Had a similar experience with AnyDesk, who quietly decreed that they need 3 months notice before the end of the year otherwise you're tied into another year. And there are zero options to make contact with them.

It's a shame because I occasionally need something with that functionality and would otherwise have happily renewed when I need it.

Same with any desk - horrible if you have a larger business account!!

Of course FTC is going after apple for their ‘terrible’ App Store policies

Worse actually. I was lucky enough to read the fine print and canceled just a month in. They called to figure out why I canceled so fast and when I pointed out the user hostile terms they said “oh ok thanks have a nice day.”

Yes. AnyDesk is often touted as a TeamViewer replacement but they’re just as bad and shady.

Both subreddits are full of users helping grandma only to get banned for commercial use, for example.

I gave RustDesk (FOSS) a try and it was nice but slow and I don’t currently have the time or resources to self host near me to see if that makes a difference.

There is a need in this space for a good home use Remote Desktop that’s easy to use and if touted as free for non-commercial use, doesn’t end up banning you later without hard evidence (or just limit free users to 1 session, etc).

Right now they all seem to be chasing medium/large/enterprise money which makes sense I suppose due to the current state of remote work.

Why is Apple able and willing to offer free, easy to use Remote Desktop capability for both macOS and iOS, but Microsoft does not?

Same with Apple offering an awesome PDF manipulating program with Preview and print to PDF, and Microsoft taking many more years to come up with just print to PDF.

Except Microsoft does, it's called QuickAssist and it's installed by default. Calling it up is as easy as pressing Win+Ctrl+Q. (Or the normal way in the app list, obviously.) At this point, using TeamViewer is just inertia.

That is news to me! I’ve been using chrome Remote Desktop for the longest time. Maybe I can drop it now.

If you're using it personally to connect to your own machines, try looking up the remote desktop assistant. I use this in combination with the VPN built into my router.

I really wish there was a way to set up an RDP gateway without Microsoft server or other complicated setups. There's an open source project rdpgw[0] that provides an RDP gateway, however it requires the use of docker, a web server, and other software. It's not suitable for small use cases like mine (once a month or so, I need to start wsl while away from home, or restart BubbleUPnP service). VPNs and docker add quite a bit of overhead to a system that's already running close to capacity.

Sadly QuickAssist seems to be moving backwards.. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/windows-admi...

The big advantage TeamViewer and AnyDesk offers is the ease of installation for non-technical users.

If someone is able to download an exe and install a program, they're able to click on a link to the store and install the program...

Besides, that article is outdated. As far as I can tell, every complaint has been fixed.

Everone knows how to use a browser to some extent.

Windows Store adds one extra step(either a complicated link or search in store)

Yes it is a trivial step for most users but those needing the help most will struggle.

https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/quick-assist is not exactly shining with positive reviews.

That said I will evaluate QuickAssist and see if it actually meets my needs.

That link gives me a wonderfully helpful "Invalid product ID" message.

Not even styled, it's just a HTTP 400 page with some cookies and that message. No HTML.

Yay Microsoft...

Indeed!

The actual link is https://apps.microsoft.com/store/detail/quick-assist/9P7BP5V...

That is about as easy for grandma as 0118 999 881 99 9119 7253 phone number..

> TeamViewer is just inertia

Or because:

- you don't know it exists

- you don't know what version of Windows someone is on, and figuring that out is painful

- they can't figure out the Microsoft Store to install it (since apparently it's moved to the Store now)

- or because you don't have a Windows machine to connect from.

Try MeshCentral .. free and open-source but you can use the "Public Server" to give you a quick and easy remote desktop access to another device you setup the agent on.

https://meshcentral.com/info/

FWIW I've been using AnyDesk for free for connecting to my work laptops (located at home, but they're on my work VPN) from my home PC for at least 3 years now with zero issues. I've been waiting for the day that they finally pull the plug, but it's yet to happen (knock on wood).

I used it fine up until lockdowns and work from home stuff. Account was flagged sometime early 21 along with a flood of other users who were initially ignored and then told to fill out a form and hope to get allowed back on.

My AD use was three home computers to either view them (LAN) or to assist my parents with various questions occasionally. Never any server OS used or on the network. No domain controllers, no email servers, heck at the time I didn’t even have any Linux or BSD machines.. physical or virtual. It was baffling and forever soured my view of AD.

Supposedly AnyDesk was started by ex-TeamViewer employees.

Personally I've been very happy with AnyDesk after migrating 3 years ago from Teamviewer. Seems a bit more performant too.

I've had no commercial nagging from AnyDesk despite using it on about 20 computers. (15 of my own + tech support for friends and family)

TeamViewer got nasty quite quickly.

RDP is nice when it is available but surprisingly less performant on more intensive graphics.

There are a variety of open source VNC solutions but they suffer from the lack of firewall punch through and setup issues.

The performance was good (TeamViewer was still slightly better imho) I just took issue with the commercial detection problems and then having to go to a webpage to beg for them to unban you.

I agree given the two options I’d choose and recommend AnyDesk first.

Over a 50/50 commercial wireless link RDP over wireguard was best for most users that I had test. AD/TV a close second and VNC was so perceptually laggy that it was a no go from the start.

Much the same with me. I have it on about 5 computers in/around my house and work, and have never had any commercial naggings, nor do I use it commercially.

Where is Congress, the FTC, state Attorney General, and DOJ on this kind of stuff?

I bet you if one of these tricks was a problem for the donors that run our government it would be taken care of.

If our representatives weren’t all so old, they might have a concept of these types of issues. Unfortunately without age limits we’re stuck with candidates so old that most lack an awareness of the most common issues of living and working with the internet.

It’s not about age (nearing 67 here, so I bristle at such mentions). Probably even the youngest members of Congress wouldn‘t have a clue about some of these items. It comes down to things like what their staff knows and what they’ve actually experienced themselves. One doesn’t generally reach public office and/or the staff of an office-holder through a path even remotely like what a typical HN commenter has followed.

The ageism in the reply makes me bristle as well. A little past 65 here. Currently employed at my third startup gig in my thirty eight year embedded systems career. Ignorance spans all age levels.

70 here, and working on an automated order taker for restaurant drive-thrus.

My role is part Developer Experience Engineer (making sure our developers are happy and productive), part Roving Troubleshooter, and part whatever else needs to get done.

One of our most important metrics is obviously how many orders we complete on our own without crew intervention. So I spend a lot of time looking at our chat logs from the stores to figure out why we had to escalate to the crew - or why they decided to take over the order.

"Welcome to McDonald's. What can I get for you?"

The running joke on our team as that most of us don't eat at McDonald's that often. But there is one sandwich I really like, you just have to customize it a bit.

"I'd like a fish filet, no cheese, with lettuce and pickles"

They use real fish in this, wild caught Alaskan pollock.

"Got it. Anything else?"

"A guava pie and that's it."

The guava cream cheese pie is really nice. A friend suggested we try it, and I was skeptical. But I would order it again any time. Not overly sweetened like I feared, and good flavor.

Disclosure: I work for IBM on this and currently our exclusive customer is McDonald's. (And it should be obvious that I don't get paid extra when you order one of my recommendations.)

As a 45 year old trying to break into the industry this gives me hope!

Your theory is that legislators mainly write legislation themselves about problems they have personally experienced? Because my understanding is that legislators are just the most visible person on a team, with much of the work being done by staff, who range widely in age. Based, of course, on input from constituents, lobbyists, civil society organizations, and government agencies.

I think it's pretty weird to jump right to "the olds know nothing" when the problem is a niche and relatively new scam. Scammers are always finding new scams. Would I like the lag time between scam creation and scam elimination to be faster? Sure. But I'd guess that legislator age is well down the list of factors causing that.

And by staff you mean lobbyists.

That's not an "internet" issue, that's a contract issue. The vast bulk of our representatives are fully credentialed with some credential that says they understand that, and the remaining few that don't can't have failed to pick up the super basic level of understanding it takes to understand that. Moreover, I'm sure quite a lot of them have been personally screwed at some point by a contract. Old they may be, but they're nowhere near as old as this sort of trick.

Give the nature of their previous work and their credentials, a good number of them have probably written contracts that have one variant or another of this trick in them.

Blatantly ageist. Even if legislators entirely relied on their own understanding of technology to make policy decisions, it would not apply here— replace that e-mail with a letter, phone call, telegram, or any other sort of communication and you’ve got the same exact problem. Unfair sales tactics and shady long-term contractual obligations aren’t exactly a new problem. When you get a few more years under your belt, you’ll realize that the advantages afforded by a young person’s perspective can be valuable but are more ephemeral and superficial than those brought by experience and wisdom.

Trusting bureaucracy to handle anything except its own preservation?

Team Viewer is a German company. In Germany, it's pretty common to have a contract automatically extend for a year if you don't cancel one to three months in advance. Most of the German users actually expect that behaviour, so it's not a surprise to them.

It's user hostile, and only recent legislation is trying to fix this.

Privacy.com is my goto now to fix problems like this. Not private.com, that's VERY different. Made that mistake once.

Sorry, but that won't fix your problem, at least not in Germany.

If your contract extends because you forgot to cancel it, you still have to pay, since it's completely legal. If your payment information is not correct, they may even charge you a reasonable surcharge for the failed payment.

After a few warning, you can be sent to a legal collection service, which you either pay, or challenge in two weeks, and it case of challenge it goes automatically to court. Then you will need to pay the contract plus court expenses, since there's 100% chance that extension of your contract is valid.

If you are outside of Germany, and unreachable to the German state, then it may work, since they could decide it's too much hassle for them to collect.

Example #354 of why the shift to subscriptions and cloudified everything has resulted in me using more open-source for consumer-style apps.

It turns out that, if you refuse to simply let me throw money at you in exchange for software and instead demand an ongoing relationship, I'm almost certain to just nope out and find a different way to fix my problem.

Intentionally baking a bad offboarding experience gives the game away - companies who do this think you're a chump and will happily fuck with you for another nickel rather than build a better product.

That is a classical dark pattern already.

If they said you would "lose service", and you did not lose service, wouldn't that count as making a false representation?

lol why do people put up with these scams? I want to sign up just so I can tell them to fuck off when they try that with me.

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