TalkTalk have just blocked Teamviewer with no notice . .

BradShort

BradShort

BradShort

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Was reinstalling Teamviewer last night, and it just would not connect, despite me trying various versions. It seems TalkTalk have been tinkering and have been totally over zealous . .

Threads>https://community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/Fibre-Broadband/Issues-with-Teamviewer-on-TalkTalk/td-p/2022637 & http://downdetector.com/status/teamviewer

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ChrisD. said:
I wonder what their reasoning is behind it. I use Teamviewer to fix my mums laptop when she has issues.
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TeamViewer (amongst other programs) is used by plenty of scammers to access peoples computers remotely.

Classic MS Tech Support scam where you get a popup that says "you have a virus! call Microsoft of this number!" then you call them and they direct you to microsoft-support.com/download and you get a teamviewer client installed.

I can see where they're coming from, but to implement without warning seems insane.

It's a shame really, because if it was a "default on" type thing that people could easily remove the block from their own online account that had plenty of warning about it likely wouldn't be too much of an issue for anyone.
 
RoyMi6 said:
TeamViewer (amongst other programs) is used by plenty of scammers to access peoples computers remotely.

Classic MS Tech Support scam where you get a popup that says "you have a virus! call Microsoft of this number!" then you call them and they direct you to microsoft-support.com/download and you get a teamviewer client installed.

I can see where they're coming from, but to implement without warning seems insane.

It's a shame really, because if it was a "default on" type thing that people could easily remove the block from their own online account that had plenty of warning about it likely wouldn't be too much of an issue for anyone.
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I know but if they blocked every vulnerability no one could get online.
 
I can sort of see why they did this - they are an ISP that attract people who only care about price, so with that comes a certain level of computer knowledge.

If you only use TeamViewer to help out family then try using Quick Assist built into Windows 10, or Chrome Remote Desktop. TeamViewer never really fully answered the questions surrounding their suspected breach last year and I don't trust them any more.
 
Caged said:
TeamViewer never really fully answered the questions surrounding their suspected breach last year and I don't trust them any more.
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What didn't they address?

No evidence of a breach. Plenty of evidence that people reused passwords and failed to enable 2FA. Very similar to the "attack" against Rockstar social club after the launch of GTA V.
 
Rhys said:
This is a daft comment.
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It is until you hear about some old person with little technological capabilities get scammed, they then get frightened and put back even further. Blocks like this are a good thing when done correctly, in this case they obviously haven't been. I want to see blocks like this done if you want to set a connection up for older people, that way you haven't got to sit around setting plenty of firewalls up, it'll be done with just a opt-in. I'm all against blocking anything without the bill payers permission first though.
 
KIA said:
What didn't they address?

No evidence of a breach. Plenty of evidence that people reused passwords and failed to enable 2FA. Very similar to the "attack" against Rockstar social club after the launch of GTA V.
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There were enough people claiming to have 2FA enabled and still got hit that I am not convinced wholly by TeamViewer's side of the story. If it was another service that got breached and password reuse was the reason that TeamViewer accounts got compromised I would have expected to hear about other services seeing a spike in logins from people other than the account holder as well. AFAIK we never even heard which service it was that had a password database breach that was supposedly the source of the TeamViewer credentials, so I remain pretty sceptical that it was a simple case of people reusing passwords.

Rhys said:
This is a daft comment.
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Ok? How do you expect discussion to happen around that reply? TalkTalk are where the AOL customers went, maybe a 'walled garden' Internet is the best approach for people who don't have the knowledge that would be able to know that someone cold-calling and claiming to be from Microsoft is not a legit caller? Put yourself in TalkTalk's position - a bunch of people phone up their customers and scam them, TalkTalk get a bad reputation (not that they don't deserve one, just for different reasons), the paper-thin margins they take each month off their customers dissolve as soon as a call goes into support saying that "their Internet is acting funny".

Yes it should have been left off for existing customers and been made an optional setting, but TeamViewer seems to be the most commonly used remote assistance tool for scamming people out of money or committing fraud, so there has to be some responsibility there.
 
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talktalks own databreaches is how their customers where then targetted with phishing phone call support requests. id be more worried as a talktalk customer than teamviewer
 
Caged said:
There were enough people claiming to have 2FA enabled and still got hit that I am not convinced wholly by TeamViewer's side of the story. If it was another service that got breached and password reuse was the reason that TeamViewer accounts got compromised I would have expected to hear about other services seeing a spike in logins from people other than the account holder as well. AFAIK we never even heard which service it was that had a password database breach that was supposedly the source of the TeamViewer credentials, so I remain pretty sceptical that it was a simple case of people reusing passwords.
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Yeah, people made a lot of claims, but no evidence was provided. TV asked for people to contact them with logs, no one did.

TV is one of the most popular consumer remote desktop products, and with LMI free gone, it would make sense for attackers to focus on TV because TV should be the most lucrative.

My money's on attackers combining login information obtained from many data breaches. It's not like we haven't seen hundreds of millions of account details leaked over the past couple of years.
 
I don't feel like it's too much to ask for the TeamViewer guys to require verification for corporate accounts, allowing them to build the custom quick support apps that behave as you'd expect normal remote assistance tools to behave, and then throw up huge warnings before unlicensed personal account connections can be accepted, with a prominent message that hitting escape at any time will end the session, maybe with a link to a page with a bit of user education on regarding what remote access entails.

TeamViewer could be doing more to try and prevent their product being used in the tech support scams, so I don't believe they are entirely blameless. TalkTalk blocking the service without warning isn't the right move to make either, but other than being able to hop into a time machine and not have their customer database stolen, I am not sure what other options are available to them.
 
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