Anyone else having issue with TeamViewer insisting they are a "commercial user"?

For past 3 days (since their last update) I keep getting the popup from TeamViewer that I am considered a "commercial user". :(

Lots of recent complaints on their "help" site which is of little help anyways.
https://community.teamviewer.com/t5/TeamViewer-General/TeamViewer-thinks-I-m-using-the-software-commercially/m-p/39758#M20088

Contacted their "Sales Desk" via the link on their web site for a "fix" and it says "Can take up to 30 days to recieve a reply / fix the problems..."

https://community.teamviewer.com/t5/TeamViewer-General/TeamViewer-thinks-I-m-using-the-software-commercially/m-p/39758#M20088

Anyone have a FREE alternative to use on Windows until they (hopefully) fix it?

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TightVNC
https://www.tightvnc.com/

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I just now, (7-29-2018 at 12:45 PM - PDT), installed TeamViewer13 on New Prometheus. I installed as a Personal User, NOT a Business/Corporate User, but I will be keeping an eye on it. I think the MacPro, (New Andromeda), has a slightly older Version of TeamViewer running. I haven't had any Popups on the MacPro from TeamViewer; again, though, I will keep an eye on New Prometheus - the i7 7700K System.


TL

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TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join Calm Chaos

Anyone have a FREE alternative to use on Windows until they (hopefully) fix it?

Well Chrome remote desktop worked for me. Only thing it has trouble with is copy/paste.

Tight VNC works OK on the same LAN but because it uses IP addresses I could never get it to work if I was out and wanted to get back to my home desktop. Needs a static IP

For me it took almost exactly 30 days to get my account made "free" again.

As far as I can make out Teamviewer is doing this to everyone so that those who complain get it for free and anyone who pays up is a bonus :-)

Thank you Brent!
Downloaded TightVNC. Will install/try it out later today on my PC's.

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To avoid the Fix IP needed by TightVNC you could use this free service:

https://www.noip.com/

It`s simulate the Static IP and works perfect with TjghtVNC. I used for years with no problem at all.

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I had this as well so I started sending the request to have the account sent back to personal status. Finally after several weeks I got this email

Dear User,

Thank you very much for your message.

I set your ID to private, non-commercial usage because I believe you that you do only use TeamViewer for private use.

So you are now able to use the free, non-commercial version again.

Please keep in mind:
TeamViewer is only free for private, non-commercial use.
If you want to use TeamViewer commercially, please buy a license.

The free version can only be used in a private environment - for example if you help friends or relatives in your free time and do not receive any money for it.
Commercial use is every usage in a business environment. This means, if you use it at work or support customers and colleagues, it will be commercial usage. Therefore, you are not allowed to use the free version of TeamViewer in any office environments. As soon as one of the PCs participating in a session is connected to a commercial network (office/school/etc.) it is considered commercial use.

**IN THE FUTURE: If this happens again, there is no need to keep sending us your logs over and over again. Normally when you do this, the system replaces your old email with the new email and it pushes the date back for us to respond**

If you have any further questions or require further information, please feel free to contact us.

Best Regards,

Maricela Gonzalez
Support Engineer

1st request was on July 17th and that email was from Aug 10th. That bolded part seems to be bull crap as there was a week between 1st and 2nd request and a request 1-2 times a day after that. I just left the tab open after submission and hit the back button. Comments and log file attachment stayed the same. I added a number in the comment as a counter to show they were separate requests over and over.

Anyway this commercial detection is waay overzealous. Verifying new hosts shows the exact location. All of mine in the past 4 years have been at the same location besides my phone. My work blocked this years ago as it was a massive security risk.

I gave up on Teamviewer and ended up purchasing RemoteMe as it's very similar in appearance and I can deal with $70 for a full year

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Also completely gave using TV and did switch to TightVNC for all my in-house PC's. So far so good and I find it uses less RAM & is noticeably faster.

Has been about 14 days now and I am still waiting on a reply from TV's "sales" team to get back to me to clear their problems while the complaints on their and quite a few other web forums continue to grow from current and now former users.

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It believe it mentions somewhere that it normally takes 3 weeks, and for me it was exactly that.

As far as I can see as soon as you update to TV 13, you automatically get the "business" message if you are a "free" user.

Those who complain are restored to the free service after 3 weeks, those who don't complain have to find another "free service" (not many out there)

Those who are actually using TV commercially and not paying, either pay up or find another product.

Makes 100% sense to me TV gets rid, one way or another, of a percentage of non-paying customers, which is a good deal for them.

Remember there is no such thing as "free"

It believe it mentions somewhere that it normally takes 3 weeks, and for me it was exactly that.

As far as I can see as soon as you update to TV 13, you automatically get the "business" message if you are a "free" user.

Those who complain are restored to the free service after 3 weeks, those who don't complain have to find another "free service" (not many out there)

Those who are actually using TV commercially and not paying, either pay up or find another product.

Makes 100% sense to me TV gets rid, one way or another, of a percentage of non-paying customers, which is a good deal for them.

Remember there is no such thing as "free"

i go through this crap every year with em and they making it harder and harder to complain and get it fixed
i'm already looking for something else i can use possibly with a server running on a digital ocean droplet

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I came down with a bad case of i don't give a crap

It believe it mentions somewhere that it normally takes 3 weeks, and for me it was exactly that.

As far as I can see as soon as you update to TV 13, you automatically get the "business" message if you are a "free" user.

Those who complain are restored to the free service after 3 weeks, those who don't complain have to find another "free service" (not many out there)

Those who are actually using TV commercially and not paying, either pay up or find another product.

Makes 100% sense to me TV gets rid, one way or another, of a percentage of non-paying customers, which is a good deal for them.

Remember there is no such thing as "free"

i go through this crap every year with em and they making it harder and harder to complain and get it fixed
i'm already looking for something else i can use possibly with a server running on a digital ocean droplet

Soon they'll notice the numerous amounts of calls to their sales team. I just keep calling their sales every once in a while to check if the thing has progressed and of course they tell me to purchase their thing

I had been on v13 for awhile before this happened to me. Although 13 may have introduced some sort of detection for business user detection. It def added the advertisements.

I suppose a VNC app could work remotely with port forwarding and a mostly static IP. I had heard about NoMachine and was trying out Mint 19 as someone said it worked for them on Mint 19 but had never gone through the hassle of setting it up the additional machines.

For many years I've endured the false "commercial user" accusations and the "stern, sideways glaring, cross-armed guy" splash screen from TeamViewer.
Then v13 started limiting connection time on one of my computers. This happened to me many years ago and it was a long hard battle to set things right again.
This time I found AnyDesk.
I eventually switched to AnyDesk on all my computers because it's free, has a small footprint, no nag screens and has the features I needed from TeamViewer.
The licensed versions add features that I don't need so all is good.

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Received an email today that TeamViewer have reinstated my personal use "licence" so I updated to the latest beta/test version on all PC's and it works OK for now.

Will continue using TightVNC in-house and keep "TV" as a backup if I need to access my PC's from elsewhere or help a friend with a PC issue remotely.

The TeamViewer forums have exploded over the last 3 1/2 weeks with more users having same issue as I had. Sadly, "TV" is moderating their forums blocking mentions of competing products that users have posted.

TeamViewer Support wrote:

Dear User,

Thank you very much for your message.

I set your ID to private, non-commercial usage because I believe you that you do only use TeamViewer for private use.

So you are now able to use the free, non-commercial version again.

Please keep in mind:
TeamViewer is only free for private, non-commercial use.
If you want to use TeamViewer commercially, please buy a license.

The free version can only be used in a private environment - for example if you help friends or relatives in your free time and do not receive any money for it.
Commercial use is every usage in a business environment. This means, if you use it at work or support customers and colleagues, it will be commercial usage. Therefore, you are not allowed to use the free version of TeamViewer in any office environments. As soon as one of the PCs participating in a session is connected to a commercial network (office/school/etc.) it is considered commercial use.

If you have any further questions or require further information, please feel free to contact us.

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TV is a huge security risk if its allowed across the network as it bypasses AD login. A password as 'password' could be used to externally access a network. There is proxy settings but no dual access requirement. IMO TV is not for businesses yet those are the ones that are forced to pay.

I got a letter from them as well reinstating my use of it but I've decided to remove it as I'm now on Linux.