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Questions Linger After ISP Blocks TeamViewer Over Fraud Fears (sophos.com)
Last Wednesday, for no apparent reason, the TeamViewer remote desktop application stopped working on the network of one of the UK's largest ISPs, TalkTalk. The apparent reason, as the investigation has found, are some scammers in India who have been abusing the application to make money. An anonymous reader shares a report: It's a popular application with remote support professionals and power users alike and so support forums soon filled with complaints from perplexed users who noticed that access was possible with 4G and some TalkTalk business connections but not home broadband. By Thursday, journalists dragged the truth out of the company that it had "blocked a number of applications including TeamViewer," which led to a joint statement confirming this on TeamViewer's website: TeamViewer and TalkTalk are in extensive talks to find a comprehensive joint solution to better address this scamming issue. We now know (as some suspected at the time) that the block was connected to abuse of TeamViewer by criminals based in India who had been using it as part of a tech support scam targeting TalkTalk customers. The BBC reported on this two days before the block, including the disturbing claim that the criminals had been able to quote stolen customer account data to make scam calls sound more convincing.
blacklist teamviewer connections from india?
Yes they can still use proxies, but anything to make their life more difficult... Like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
As much flak as American ISPs get for their noncompetitive and morally bereft behavior, we do need to be reminded that things could generally be much worse. There is nothing wrong with pressuring large businesses (especially those with government-sanctioned monopolies) to change their shameful ways, but I do occasionally breathe a sigh of relief that, at least for the moment, our biggest concerns (outside of government spying) are speed, price, and general availability of service.
It seems almost commonplace for websites or services to get blocked at an ISP level in the UK, and that fact alone seems more frightening than any increase in price that Comcast could throw at me.
The internet is always used by internet scammers. If you completely block the internet, it will eliminate all those scams!
My neighbor keeps being taken advantage of by scammers in India and Eastern Europe. TeamViewer seems to be the tool of choice. I finally talked her into putting Linux on there (she doesn't really know what that means) and blackholed all DNS requests for every website I could find that is even remotely related to remote access. Many won't work on Linux but I'd rather not find out. Firefox is set to block add-ons. Life is much better now and she has no problem with her shiny new Linux system.
I wish there was something we could do to better protect the elderly. Blocking TeamViewer may be a great idea for the elderly who fall victim to scams several times a day, but they're a little misguided to do so for everyone.
Facebook is probably used for more fraud than TeamViewer.
The words of an expert in the field.
Ooh you're gonna get eaten alive Mr Troll
These scams are extensive, and TeamViewer and other remote-access programs know about it but don't do anything. Blocking them is the only way to get them to sit the fuck up and listen and do something about it.
Just search on YouTube for tech support scams, and you can see hundreds or thousands of videos of these scammers in operation.
I think you can run it in Wine.
Have gnu, will travel.
Tell that to your grandmotherâ. They are the people getting scammed. She has no idea what VPN means.
I have a VMware VM running Ubuntu with the Linux version of TeamViewer. When I do have to connect to someone, TeamViewer is running in a fairly safe sandbox.
...because they're too lazy to investigate and block the phone numbers that the scammers are using.
I answered in a very simple-minded voice, and told "Paul," after he explained that they're tracking all sorts of malicious traffic coming from my computer that I liked it that way. When he tried to confirm that statement, I told him I liked to share. By that point I was far enough off of his script that he gave up and hung up the phone.
I think next time I'm going to sound all cagey and worried that people were finding out about the kinds of malicious scripts I've been writing.
Looking for a computer support specialist for your small business? Check out
FFS you moron.
'These scams are extensive, they all use phone calls, both cellular and land line, Blocking peoples access to the phone system is the only way to get the phone companies to sit the fuck up and listen and do something about it'
'These scams are extensive, they all target Windows users, Making the home use of Windows illegal is the only way to get Microsoft to sit the fuck up and listen and do something about it'
Probably over your head, but getting the idea?
Teamviewer is NOT the problem here - the problem appears to be that the ISP has had account data stolen, that is then being used to scam their members - and they are reacting by blaming one of the tools being used, almost certainly to cloud their own responsibility.
Yes, these scams are common and ugly. The ISP however could EASILY be blocking IP ranges of teamviewer, not just all access - ESPECIALLY as in this case it appears the scammers have data the ISP has lost.....
Your choices are generally mre limited when you rent though to whatever company owns the cable lines and whatever company owns the telephone lines, the latter of which has relatively low bandwidth DSL. Wireless is beginning to compete, though. I live with my mom, not in some basement, and we lived with my uncle for awhile and a company stringing fiber arrived to compete with the regular cable company. We rent near my sister now and our choices are the aforementioned two.
and then the scammers will all switch to gotomypc
Allowing a 3rd party access to your LAN == Stupid. Especially if you don't have a contract (i.e. free use version).
If you don't have the technical expertise to setup a proper VPN and run your own remote desktop, then you have no business using a remote desktop/access system.
I'm amazed at the level of incompetence shown daily.
Probably the same guys claiming to be from Microsoft. If you hear a Indian accent, just tell them to eat shit and hang up.
This is time number#2 that folks reported random logins into PCs running TeamViewer. Reddit has more details as not phone scammers but another round 2 of PCs getting logged into with malware being loaded and logged off!
A flame war with asshats system administrators denying it because there is no proof in a company statement. But to me evidence says otherwise if reports keep coming back. I have stopped using it and recommend others to stay away. Crappy and odd it's only TeamViewer that has that issue
http://saveie6.com/
no i'm pretty sure hes going to have to install virtualbox to run windows to run cygwin to run his unix utilitys.
yes scammers like team viewer but they also use other vnc apps like cracked versions of go to assets and so on. but you can go blaming the app for its misuse. its like blocking edge because scammers make fake pop ups.
sigh...
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
It's used by criminal elements
Not all equal - teamviewer has quite a few security holes in areas where VNC doesn't even have any access at all (eg. filesystem access). Google "teamviewer security vulnerability" for a bit of a rundown as to why it is a very poor choice in a market full of many other options.
Blocking teamviewer as a policy at a business that is a user of a carriers service is a very good idea since it's not just the scammers you have to worry about. A carrier doing the blocking is not such a good idea since many of their clients may have a need for it.
Yes, yes, I know there are valid, legitimate uses for Windows- I've used it myself on occasion. But the fact remains that probably 99.9999999% of its use is by scammers to fuck people out of their money and to drop malware on their PCs.
First install a VM and put Linux in there so you can learn how to use it before it's all you've got.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
Yup. I'd sue them for every minute of down time at a rate of $1000 per hour because they were committing fraud. blocking ports means its not an internet connection its something else.
I use a different UK telco/ISP as my service provider but I have seen exactly the same problem as those reported in the OP and in the linked article. The thing is, the issue isn't Teamviewer per se, or even that the ISP chose to unilaterally [and without consultation or warning] block the technology on their portion of the network]. These are symptoms and consequences of the real problem.
The fundamental issue here is that the ISP in question chose to outsource a portion of its Customer Service function to a deprived area of India - an area where they could hire trained staff to work for a fraction of UK wages [about 20-25%] and thereby increase their profits by a corresponding amount. There are zero benefits to the customer from having a call centre in India - the only ones who get to benefit are the Directors, Senior Management and shareholders of the company in question.
Up until March 2016 I received 2-3 such scam calls per week. Then one day one of the callers made a mistake and quoted a company-internal reference number from my telephone [landline] service provider. The quoted data was unique to me, only printed on my paper statement and unrelated to any other details about me. Armed with this [and a couple of related facts I managed to tease out of the caller] I got in touch with my telco's Fraud Prevention department and had a long discussion with one of their investigators. I asked that the person concerned cross-check their call database records from their call centre to see how many times my UK number was called, and on what occasions, and from which of their operators. I had enough information to persuade them that the attempted fraud calls were originating on their equipment - and suggested to the person that my telco's own call centre infrastructure was being used by a criminal group to perpetrate fraud against UK customers.
At first I received bluster and pushback, at which point I suggested that in the event my telco did not take the matter seriously, I would complain to my Member of Parliament, the UK telecoms Regulator and the press.
March 2016. Have not received a SINGLE fraudulent call since.
The issue isn't TeamViewer. The issue is that TalkTalk have put their profits before safe business practices. Clearly they don't protect their client data, they don't screen their employees effectively and - if they are anything like my Telco - they don't even know when their own call centres are being used to perpetrate boiler-room fraud.
I just wish that I could find someone in UK law enforcement willing to take this sort of thing seriously and start to see the large corporations prosecuted when their negligence endangers the safety of their clients. Unfortunately, until there are some serious fines handed down, or preferably until a couple of directors are jailed for breach of duty, negligence or malfeasance, this isn't going to change.
Here's your fraud right here: http://www.centurylink.com/datausage
Sed s/teamviewer/anyservice/
Fucking paranoid cunt.
How else can you say that? Discriminating one application.
Part of the problem with Teamviewer is that after being installed it usually runs after every startup so those security holes are always open to anything that can get as far as your PC. I keep on finding it running on machines where the user has not used Teamviewer for well over a year.
You probably had some problem such as firewall software in the way which made such an otherwise utterly trivial task difficult. It doesn't do as much as Teamviewer and is a lot simpler to set up and use, plus there has been around twenty years to shake out the bugs.
The autism-hating, custom EpiPen-hating, Musk-hating Slashdot troll!
The custom EpiPen-hating, autism-hating, Musk-hating Slashdot troll!