TeamViwer

TeamViewer has stated that they will stop performing checks for commercial use of their remote control product in regions heavily affected by the Coronavirus.

TeamViewer is a remote control software that is commercial organizations can purchase to offer remote support and for non-commercial, or personal, users to use for free to control their computer or help friends and family.

Even personal use of TeamViewer is meant to be for free, some users are erroneously detected as being used for commercial use.

When this happens, their sessions will be disconnected and they are prompted to purchase the program with various alerts, some comical, as shown below.

TeamViewer Commercial use detected alerts
TeamViewer Commercial use detected alerts

With more people working from home, friends and family helping each other with technical issues, or some using it for commercial reasons without a license, many TeamViewer users have started to receive the dreaded "Commercial use detected" alerts.

Once they receive this alert, their TeamViewer ID is added to a bucket of users who will continue to see this message when using TeamViewer. The only way to use TeamViewer again for personal use is to submit a request to have their TeamViewer ID reset.

After reaching out to the TeamViewer, TheRegister was told that TeamViewer is stopping the checks for commercial users in regions heavily affected by the Coronavirus.

"We have stopped checking connections for commercial use in heavily affected regions like China and Italy already some weeks ago and are currently implementing that for lots of other affected countries including UK," TeamViewer told TheRegister.

In a statement to BleepingComputer, TeamViewer stated that the USA is region where commercial checks are not being conducted anymore.

"Yes, the US is also included now in the regions where we don’t check commercial use anymore to allow individuals (not commercial companies) to use TeamViewer in the current crisis situation for whatever purpose they need it," TeamViewer told BleepingComputer.

Update 3/25/20: Added TeamViewer's statement about the USA.

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