# British ISP  blocks control tool TeamViewer



## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Mar 10, 2017)

TalkTalk has blocked remote desktop management tool TeamViewer from its network, following a spate of scammers using the software to defraud customers.

A spokeswoman for the UK ISP confirmed it had blocked "a number of sites and applications" including TeamViewer from its network to protect customers from phishing and scamming activities.

The company said it was working with TeamViewer and other third parties on implementing some additional security measures to enhance security.

TeamViewer is one of the most popular pieces of software to enable remote access. It was also used by hundreds of scammers attempting to defraud TalkTalk customers by gaining remote access to their computers.

TeamViewer has previously said it takes the security and privacy of its customers "extremely seriously" and "condemns the use of TeamViewer to subvert systems and gain unauthorised access to private data."


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## RejZoR (Mar 10, 2017)

But it's not like they can do anything. That's the equivalent of Walmart selling knives. They can be used to cut carrots, but they can also be used to kill someone. Are we going to ban all knives in Walmart because people can use them to kill others? That's the position TeamViewer is in and banning it network wide is ridiculous. This means legit tech services now can't provide direct support using TeamViewer to anyone who is a customer of this ISP.


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## remixedcat (Mar 10, 2017)

Mixed on this... there have been multiple vulnerabilities in team viewer... 

However ISPs blocking this is strange hope they don't block all apps like this...


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## FordGT90Concept (Mar 10, 2017)

*cough*nannystate*cough*

Better plan is for them to report the IPs the scammers are using to the authorities so the fraudsters can be shut down.


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## R00kie (Mar 10, 2017)

FordGT90Concept said:


> *cough*nannystate*cough*
> 
> Better plan is for them to report the IPs the scammers are using to the authorities so the fraudsters can be shut down.


They might be using a Virtual machine from a provider somewhere in the Swiss Alps, sitting behind a dozen of VPN's. It's not that easy to do.


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## Tatty_One (Mar 10, 2017)

TalkTalk will naturally be cautious, they got hacked last year and 1 million (or possibly more) customers got their personal data compromised, fortunately not bank stuff which was held separately, their customers have since been targeted continually with this kind of stuff.


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## FordGT90Concept (Mar 10, 2017)

gdallsk said:


> They might be using a Virtual machine from a provider somewhere in the Swiss Alps, sitting behind a dozen of VPN's. It's not that easy to do.


That's what Interpol is for.  If the VPN won't cooperate to shutdown the criminals, seize the equipment/facility.  Pull the thread until the person holding it is found.

Seriously, there needs to be an international cyber crime unit.  It takes too long for contemporary law enforcement to deal with bot nets and other cyber crime.


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## jboydgolfer (Mar 10, 2017)

FordGT90Concept said:


> That's what Interpol is for.  If the VPN won't cooperate to shutdown the criminals, seize the equipment/facility.  Pull the thread until the person holding it is found.
> 
> Seriously, there needs to be an international cyber crime unit.  It takes too long for contemporary law enforcement to deal with bot nets and other cyber crime.



 Agreed. I remember after looking around online myself, & reading that authorities were hitting brick walls after tracing scammer calls to India(&  I presume other third world nations ).  Due to poor infrastructure and corrupt officials ( as I recall that was given excuse ), essentially they were just throwing theyre collective hands up when it would show an out of country origin for the scammer.also, the fact that scammers are able to shutdown, and restart operations in literally less than a few hours, makes obtaining warrants, and legal seizure paperwork VERY difficult, since as we all know, the wheels of government move like old people Fu@k.

 I think you're 100% right because if the scammers don't have a sense of impunity They certainly will think twice before trying to make an easy dollar or Rupee

heres one such example


*"Investigators who have spoken to the Guardian on condition of anonymity say that one man, based in the city of Kota in Rajasthan, is behind the centres running the scams.
He has provided fake documentation to a number of payment companies including PayPal and Alertpay, a Montreal-based online payment company, to set up accounts which route money to a bank account in Kota with Axis Bank.
Though people on dozens of web forums have recorded their experiences with the scammers, police and trading standards officers in the UK are powerless to stop them.
UK telephone numbers for contacting the company on the sites are not "geographical" ‑ tied to a location ‑ but instead allocated to voice-over-internet providers.
That means that the calls connect internationally, but cost the scammers almost nothing when anyone calls them.
In the same way, it costs them virtually nothing to make the calls because the international part of the call goes via the internet.
If the payment has been made on a debit card ‑ as many are ‑ there is no hope of reversing the payment. A number of payment organisations used by the scammers have shut down their accounts. PayPal, the eBay-owned credit transfer company, and AlertPay have both taken rapid action against scam sites which used them.
In March, site hosting company Hostgator shut down one of the longest-running sites used for the alleged scam, F1Compstepuk.com, after complaints.
After confirming with Microsoft that the site was not acting for it, Hostgator immediately shut it down. Josh Loe, Hostgator's co-founder, said that following the initial complaint, "we asked for more information regarding this to confirm. We received a message from a Microsoft representative via this particular person who contacted us first about this. At that time it was enough evidence to close the site and it was done so the same day."
But one investigator who has been tracking the growth of the scam says the challenge is that new sites offering the same fake "service" keep popping up "like mushrooms".
At first the scammers tried desperately to maintain the reputation of their sites, by flooding any forum which garnered enough criticism of their activities with postings claiming that the site helped fix their machine.
But the poor spelling and grammar of the replies – allied to internet addresses which show that the commenters are based in India – contrasted sharply with that of people in the UK, US and Australia complaining about the attempted scam.
Now they have shifted to creating multiple sites from templates, using stock phrases and photos. However, investigators are sure that the same man ‑ and central operation ‑ is behind all of the schemes. "I don't think that this could really have spread that far. Even if they can see that some of their friends are making money from this, the calls are too similar every time," said one. "It's got to be the same organisation each time.""*


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## RCoon (Mar 10, 2017)

Only fools use TalkTalk anyway. They're legit one of the worst ISP's in the UK, so there's literally no reason to go with them over another provider (we don't have monopolies like in the US where a town can ONLY get ComCast or w/e).

Their prices are cheap, but not significantly cheaper than the next alternative (Plus.net, who have won awards for customer service), their internet service is spotty and relatively poor, and they don't look after their customer's data (got hacked and didn't tell their customers). Frankly if you're paying TalkTalk anything you deserve not to have access to TeamViewer.

The issue is not solely with TeamViewer either. Scammers use TeamViewer's and others' free trials in their scheme. They also use stolen paid-for accounts. Frankly there's very little this block achieves aside from screwing over a company for no reason other than saving face, pretending they're looking out for their customers.


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## jboydgolfer (Mar 10, 2017)

RCoon said:


> we don't have monopolies like in the US where a town can ONLY get ComCast or w/e)



yeah, your friggin lucky. dealing with my ISP is like a crack head dealing with his drug dealer.....they KNOW you have to eat theyre shit, and like it too, so they treat us accordingly


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## newtekie1 (Mar 10, 2017)

One of the reasons the scammers like TeamViewer so much you don't need an account to use it and it is totally free(yeah the free version starts nagging you after a while, but you don't actually have to pay for it to keep using it).


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## Tatty_One (Mar 10, 2017)

RCoon said:


> Only fools use TalkTalk anyway. They're legit one of the worst ISP's in the UK, so there's literally no reason to go with them over another provider (we don't have monopolies like in the US where a town can ONLY get ComCast or w/e).
> 
> Their prices are cheap, but not significantly cheaper than the next alternative (Plus.net, who have won awards for customer service), their internet service is spotty and relatively poor, and they don't look after their customer's data (got hacked and didn't tell their customers). Frankly if you're paying TalkTalk anything you deserve not to have access to TeamViewer.
> 
> The issue is not solely with TeamViewer either. Scammers use TeamViewer's and others' free trials in their scheme. They also use stolen paid-for accounts. Frankly there's very little this block achieves aside from screwing over a company for no reason other than saving face, pretending they're looking out for their customers.


I was on TalkTalk for 10 years until just a few weeks ago, whilst generally I didn't have any issues with the service I was paying for a 10mbit broadband connection and getting half of that and it was not about distances from exchanges etc, just a lack of investment in infrastructure, now got 200mbit Fibre Optic from Virgin, we will see how they pan out.


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## R-T-B (Apr 7, 2017)

FordGT90Concept said:


> That's what Interpol is for.  If the VPN won't cooperate to shutdown the criminals, seize the equipment/facility.  Pull the thread until the person holding it is found.
> 
> Seriously, there needs to be an international cyber crime unit.  It takes too long for contemporary law enforcement to deal with bot nets and other cyber crime.



The issue is there are places where it is legal to run a VPN that literally keeps no logs, so cooperation is rendered effectively impossible.


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## Killerdroid (Apr 7, 2017)

RCoon said:


> Only fools use TalkTalk anyway.



And the alternative is?


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## Tatty_One (Apr 7, 2017)

Killerdroid said:


> And the alternative is?



Plusnet
Virgin
Sky
Vodafone
BT
SSE
Origin
EE
John Lewis
BB Warehouse
Direct save
Pop Telecom

But not knowing what is available in you area (being lost) makes it a tad more difficult


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## puma99dk| (Apr 7, 2017)

Hmm this isn't good my girl in the UK is using Talktalk and been for yrs never had an issue so we will have to find another way for me to help her with her pc


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## Boatvan (Apr 7, 2017)

I went from TV to VNC Connect for my remote managing of home PC's from work. You can have up to 5 computers on your "team" for free. Just like Teamviewer, you may connect from anywhere. Not sure of the security aspect, but it is password protected and I believe you can choose the encryption type.


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## dorsetknob (Apr 7, 2017)

Tatty_One said:


> Plusnet
> Virgin
> Sky
> Vodafone
> ...


Add to that list
Post Office Broadband
Home Telecom ( i'm with them and lR is under £10 )


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## Killerdroid (Apr 7, 2017)

Tatty_One said:


> Plusnet
> Virgin
> Sky
> Vodafone
> ...



Vodafone wouldn't give us (or anyone from reading their support forums) the router login details. They want you to use their supplied router which wasn't good.

EE although helpful kept us running round in circles.  After a 3rd visit from the BT engineer who did some thorough tests both inside and out over 3 days finally admitted the overhead copper lines and equipment in the exchange were substandard.  And neither BT or our ISP were willing to pay for the upgrades.

We are back with TT and our so called fibre optic (on degraded copper lines??) is lagging again today.
The infrastructure is shot to pieces.

I'm in North Wales. The exchange is 1.5 miles away and only recently did Fibre boxes start to appear on the streets. A poor service from all leaves a bitter taste in the mouth :/
Heavy rainfall nearly makes it unusable at times.


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## Ahhzz (Apr 7, 2017)

Boatvan said:


> I went from TV to VNC Connect for my remote managing of home PC's from work. You can have up to 5 computers on your "team" for free. Just like Teamviewer, you may connect from anywhere. Not sure of the security aspect, but it is password protected and I believe you can choose the encryption type.


One of the things I liked about, I think version 9, was the ability to drag and drop files between the two connected computers. Does VNC support that now? also, how is the bandwidth and video quality compared to TV?


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## qubit (Apr 7, 2017)

Tatty_One said:


> Plusnet
> Virgin
> Sky
> Vodafone
> ...


Ya missed the two best ISPs in the business:

www.zen.co.uk

www.aaisp.net.uk

Service with these two is second to none and crucially no website blocking or filtering of any kind, plus they won't sell you out with copyright infringement letters.


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## dorsetknob (Apr 7, 2017)

ISP's to AVOID


Killerdroid said:


> wouldn't give us (or anyone from reading their support forums) the router login details. They want you to use their supplied router which wasn't good.


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## FreedomEclipse (Apr 7, 2017)

puma99dk| said:


> Hmm this isn't good my girl in the UK is using Talktalk and been for yrs never had an issue so we will have to find another way for me to help her with her pc



Im up to the task.

I can meet her face to face for coffee where we can discuss the issues she maybe having , then a movie at the cinema, dinner at a posh Italian restaurant and finally her home where I'll be servicing her box

All free of course


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## Tatty_One (Apr 7, 2017)

qubit said:


> Ya missed the two best ISPs in the business:
> 
> www.zen.co.uk
> 
> ...


I didn't look at a list, those few were just from memory..... I am nearly 57, 10 years ago there would have been 200 in my list


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## puma99dk| (Apr 7, 2017)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Im up to the task.
> 
> I can meet her face to face for coffee where we can discuss the issues she maybe having , then a movie at the cinema, dinner at a posh Italian restaurant and finally her home where I'll be servicing her box
> 
> All free of course



That's a no go, she ain't very socialized with ppl she don't know even getting her to speak not writing was hard took me over 2yrs


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## qubit (Apr 7, 2017)

Tatty_One said:


> I didn't look at a list, those few were just from memory..... I am nearly 57, 10 years ago there would have been 200 in my list


Oh yeah, I'm with ya. I just thought those two deserved a mention as they're both fantastic and not enough people know about them.

I used to be with AAISP until the high monthly price and the low data cap (100MB/month, extendable for a tenner) became too much to bear.

They have a control panel that's second to none though. They ping the line to check it's still up, every single second 24/7 and you have real admin level privileges over your line such as line sensitivity, ADSL type and lots of stuff I only half understand. In fact, by fiddling with what you don't understand, you can take out your line so that you have to meekly call their support line and have them kindly fix the cockup you made.  I never actually did that, but I did trigger a major BT test on my line and exchange once. Oops. They've also got superb reporting and status updates.

Their tech support is fantastic too. Real techies man those lines and you don't get any bullshit from them, either. Superb ISP and I really miss that enthusiast-level control panel. I could go on and on and on, that's how good they are.

However, I'm now with Zen on a cheaper service with unlimited data and great customer service. They're not on quite the same techy level as AAISP though, but do give you a solid and reliable service.

If I'm ever feeling rich, I might just go back to AAISP again as I do miss them. Their data cap currently stands at 1TB/month, which isn't bad, but can still be chewed through even on an a 19Mb/s ADSL line like mine. When they improve this offer I'd be more tempted to pay that premium again.


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