Commercial use - Connection time out

JeanK · 2017-06-02T06:49:25+00:00

There was an error rendering this rich post.

Hi all,

👉 Request your reset here 👈

Read my Blog article to find more information about Commercial usage and the link to request the reset of your TeamViewer usage:

👉Click here for reading the blog article👈

Further articles:

Why do I see 'Commercial use suspected' / 'Commercial use detected'

What is commercial use?

📌 Please be aware that this is NOT an issue that can be resolved in the community. Posting messages about commercial usage will not help to get the reset. For getting a reset you need to fill out the form.

📌 Please be informed that the Community team is merging all posts about this topic underneath this post. We are doing this to make sure that users finding the right information quickly when using the search function.

If you are using TeamViewer for your employment or in a business setting, please contact our sales department to find out how your company can benefit from using TeamViewer!

Thanks and best,

/JeanK

Find more posts tagged with

Commercial usage

Comments

fidmas

Thanks, but that's the form I used twice months ago. No replys. I'm getting friends and family to use **Third Party Product** even though it's more trouble to do remote restarts.

Steve-in-FL

@rkotkas

Go to the very first post in this thread to find all the info you need to get this resolved. Nothing can be resolved by asking here. (Note that some people have successfully gotten the problem fixed, others have not,)

Here is a direct link to the form:

https://www.teamviewer.com/en/support/commercial-use-suspected/

Bankfodder

I'm afraid that there's nothing you can do except to contact teamviewer using their special "commercial use suspected form" and to make your case. Customer support seems to be very patchy and the approach to suspected commercial use doesn't seem to follow any particular pattern or logic that people can understand.

If you get unblocked then it's great.

I've never seen a message quite like that one. It's normally more cautious and says that the commercial uses suspected and doesn't talk about your team your partner. This message is new to me

neilestate

I'm not using it for commercial use but I have a message requiring I pay to get the commercial version. How can I fix this. I only use it with family and friends. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling. Or how can I find out who I connected with that has a commercial version so I know.

fidmas

I submitted the form requesting them to analyze my usage, to prove it wasn't being used commercially months ago. Never even a reply. They don't care. Use another product. I gave up.

rkotkas

Hello

I have a problem with my Teamviewer account: I´m being kicked out of the system claiming to be using the program commercialy. That is not true, I´m using Teamviewer for personal use only, devices connected are:

My laptop.
My wife grandfather´s laptop.
My grandfathers laptop.

I am using Teamviewer to help our grandparents with their computer questions.

Can you convert my account back to normal state as I am unable to provide any assistance to them while being kicked out?

jelabarre59

@DanLester wrote:
Most are functionally equivalent to TV in screen sharing, though TV is somewhat more capable in file sharing, and has a more robust user interface.

Sometimes that's all you need anyway. I know for my purposes I just need to connect to a family member's machine to troubleshoot something (or to a machine in the other room I'm doing a test installation on). I don't need to chat through the application, I don't need to conference in other people, and can in some cases use WinSCP to do file transfers to/from my home machine. Biggest issue comes about from knowing the remote machine's address, and tunneling through without having to open more holes in a firewall/router.

DanLester

I agree. TeamViewer is offering users value as a free service. That being said, the value is minimized if users have to jump through hoops to use it. Years ago, TeamViewer used to be the definitive free app for controlling remote machines. Not so anymore.

Littlesteve

Hallo,

ich habe immer mal wieder Freunden/Familie/Verwandten mit TeamViewer bei Computerproblemen weitergeholfen, seit gestern sind all meine Verbindungen auf 5 minuten begrenzt mit dem hinweiß "verdacht auf kommerzielle nutzung"
wie kann ich das wieder da

Johnhoward28

@User333717

Calm down. I know it is frustrating, but like or not, you have to follow the rules. Don't turn this into a war on TV. They are a private company offering professional services for free to personal users.

Bankfodder

@Steve-in-FL wrote:
@Bankfodder wrote:
I just checked it again and I can confirm that I can teamviewer out to any machine using my PC but if I want to teamviewer into the PC then it is restricted.

strangely though I just tried installing teamviewer on a Google Slate and using my own account I was able to teamviewer into my PC.

There is definitely a directional issue here. It's very strange. And clearly it's not consistent because using my own account on the Google Slate, I can teamviewer into the PC. On the other two devices, I get a commercial warning and about five minutes of use.
So, let me ask a question, because something you are saying is striking me. You say when you use "my own account" you can successfully TeamViewer into your PC. When you are not using your own account, what are you using? There may be a commercial connection of some sort to those other IDs. Or... perhaps doing a TeamViewer session between two different accounts is inspected some other way. Maybe a private TV account outbound is OK, but a non-private (for whatever reason) account inbound is not OK. Just throwing things out there for consideration. It would be an interesting test if you used your account on one of the machines that is failing going into your home PC.
All of my experience is using my one (and only) TeamViewer account for all the instances of TeamViewer that I have installed, both on my personal machines at home and on the machines of friends and family.

I only use one account. I use the same account for all my devices and that brings me to another puzzle. In the past, I have been blocked (each way) on some devices and not others. I've always thought that it was a bit strange that the teamviewer system which they have put in place to detect commercial use seems only to base its decision upon device serial numbers and not the user account.
I find this very strange because it means that somebody who is using teamviewer commercially might actually escape being blocked by using on different devices.

By the way, the couple of years ago I did open a second account to see if that was able to bypass the blocking but of course because the blocking appears to be based upon the device serial number, the device remained blocked. I have since cancelled that account.

I don't really see any point in playing fast and loose with teamviewer. It's their software and there are entitled to run it as they wish. I'm very grateful to have some free access to it but I wish they would sort their systems out.

They could give:
better support
better communication
Better response times
transparency
generally, a better system which takes into account people's accounts as well as device numbers

DanLester

Unfortunately, the moderators of this forum do not allow anyone to call out TeamViewer alternatives. Just Google "TeamViewer alternatives" and you'll come up with a lot that are free. (Gosh, I hope I'm allowed to say that!) Most are functionally equivalent to TV in screen sharing, though TV is somewhat more capable in file sharing, and has a more robust user interface.

DanLester

Well, so as of a month ago, I got the dreaded "commercial use detected" message, and my account was disabled. Ptoooee.

As of two weeks ago, I downloaded their "Declaration of Private Use" form, in which I assured them that I was ONLY going to use my TeamViewer for private use, and sent it in. Didn't hear anything. Just today, two weeks later, I decided, on a lark, to try it. All capabilities are restored. So they accepted my "Declaration of Private Use" form, restored my service, and didn't tell me. Thanks, TeamViewer! So if you send in that form, don't expect an answer.

In the meantime, I've set up alternative applications (which they won't let me quote here), so I consider TeamViewer now to be sort of a sidelight. Yawn.

Steve-in-FL

@Bankfodder wrote:
I just checked it again and I can confirm that I can teamviewer out to any machine using my PC but if I want to teamviewer into the PC then it is restricted.

strangely though I just tried installing teamviewer on a Google Slate and using my own account I was able to teamviewer into my PC.

There is definitely a directional issue here. It's very strange. And clearly it's not consistent because using my own account on the Google Slate, I can teamviewer into the PC. On the other two devices, I get a commercial warning and about five minutes of use.

So, let me ask a question, because something you are saying is striking me. You say when you use "my own account" you can successfully TeamViewer into your PC. When you are not using your own account, what are you using? There may be a commercial connection of some sort to those other IDs. Or... perhaps doing a TeamViewer session between two different accounts is inspected some other way. Maybe a private TV account outbound is OK, but a non-private (for whatever reason) account inbound is not OK. Just throwing things out there for consideration. It would be an interesting test if you used your account on one of the machines that is failing going into your home PC.

All of my experience is using my one (and only) TeamViewer account for all the instances of TeamViewer that I have installed, both on my personal machines at home and on the machines of friends and family.

jelabarre59

Considering I've tried it on multiple machines, multiple OS'es over a period of 2 or 3 years, and these being machines at different locations (different ISPs), I can only presume it's Google's standard brokenness that permeates their products from search on downwards.

I'd just use some VNC configuration if I were able to set up forwarding on everybody's routers (and I'd have to have some self-updating DDNS as well, so I would know what IP they were hanging out at). Time to start looking at those possibilities again.

tjhall1000

i dont know what you mean by broken. it was just plug and play for me, installed on browser. installed on phone. logged in on both and BAM it was good to go. no issues. havent noticed a single thing wrong with it. its response time is amazing

if something if broken about it. then its user error and you did something wrong lol

jelabarre59

@tjhall1000 wrote:
honestly. while this issue has been happening.... i downloaded **Third Party Product** cuz i needed to watch my anime while not at home. cuz thats the only reason i use TV is to watch anime on my computer while im not home.

[removed per Community Guidelines - Sales/Solicitation policy]

im sad i never knew about chromes version

What, you mean someone actually got the **Third Party Product** to work???? It's been BROKEN for the years I've tried to get it to work.

All this would be so much easier if I could get all the family members to switch to Linux. All I need to do then is SSH into their systems.

jelabarre59

Same thing here. The "Commercial Use Suspected" form is BROKEN. I wouldn't put it past the TeamViewer folks to have broken it intentionally.

jbliddle

A couple of weeks ago, TeamViewer started giving me a popup stating that I am using the product commercially. I filled in the form and sent it in and received an email on 24 sept. stating:
Dear TeamViewer User,

Thank you for getting in touch with us. We are happy to inform you that your TeamViewer ID has been reset to “free”. After reviewing your request, we decided that your use case can be qualified as “personal”.

I've since been trying daily to log in and I'm still getting the commercial use popup window with login restrictions and faster timeouts. Is there something additional that I need to do to get my TeamViewer back to what it was before?

Thank you for any assistance you can provide.

Bankfodder

Bankfodder
You are the only person to have mentioned a directional issue. What I can suggest is that you test all pairs of your IDs. If you can connect from ABC in your home to DEF outside your home, you should be able to connect in the other direction. Try the combinations and see if there is always a single ID that seems to fail. For me, the single failing ID was consistent and no matter what other IDs I used in combination, the connection failed. When I got that one unblocked, each of my IDs worked with all of the others. If we can identify a directional issue, that would truly be a new bit of information.

Thanks for this reply – and the suggestions.

I just checked it again and I can confirm that I can teamviewer out to any machine using my PC but if I want to teamviewer into the PC then it is restricted.

It is restricted from a Samsung S9 phone
It is restricted from a Google Pixel C tablet

strangely though I just tried installing teamviewer on a Google Slate and using my own account I was able to teamviewer into my PC.

There is definitely a directional issue here. It's very strange. And clearly it's not consistent because using my own account on the Google Slate, I can teamviewer into the PC. On the other two devices, I get a commercial warning and about five minutes of use.

I find myself wondering how long it will be before they block access from the Google Slate – or even worse, block access in both directions.

Steve-in-FL

@musicreporter wrote:
Uninstalling and reinstalling with new acct will make no difference.
Apparently TV records your PC's IP address,.....so the problem remains the same.

So, what I have gathered so far is this: as mentioned by others, reinstalling will not change anything. Each machine is uniquely identified by TeamViewer and issued a unique TeamViewer ID. The PC’s IP address is not static over time. IP addresses are re-issued periodically by the router and a given IP address is not guaranteed to remain the same (although it often is). My suspicion is that TeamViewer uses some other unique identifier that ties to your machine and only your machine, something like the machine's MAC address, which is static over the life of the hardware..

Bankfodder

You are the only person to have mentioned a directional issue. What I can suggest is that you test all pairs of your IDs. If you can connect from ABC in your home to DEF outside your home, you should be able to connect in the other direction. Try the combinations and see if there is always a single ID that seems to fail. For me, the single failing ID was consistent and no matter what other IDs I used in combination, the connection failed. When I got that one unblocked, each of my IDs worked with all of the others. If we can identify a directional issue, that would truly be a new bit of information.

Bankfodder

@jojker wrote:
Let us know if setting up a new account works (since the IP address doesn't change). I'm trying an alternative I had overlooked. TV is still easier to use but we'll see.
@AlexandarP
@AlexandarP wrote:
I have the same problem. Only I use my personal phone to connect to my pc for things such as personal documents and remote shut down. I use the service rarely and ever so often I assist my friends with their pc troubles. I especially needed the service today and my connection kept getting blocked. At some point I got flagged for no clear reason and after two tries and three weeks, I still have yet to get a reply. I might as well create a new account if they dont reply soon. If you get any updates that would be helpful, im curious to know their reasoning behind all the flagging.
Best of luck.
-A

Well the reason behind all the flagging is pretty clear – that it's their software and they want to make money from it and that people are abusing it. All that is fair enough.

What is frustrating is that the whole business seems to be so disorganised and inconsistent and also they appear to have put a system in place to deal with people who are wrongly identified as commercial users – but the system is not operating very well.

I don't think anyone can have any problem with teamviewer running their business and the way they want – but it's a shame that they can't get a proper system up and running. For instance, as I have pointed out, some of my devices are not blocked and one of my devices is blocked but only for incoming teamviewer connections. Outgoing teamviewer connections doesn't seem to cause any problems. This is quite amazing

musicreporter

Uninstalling and reinstalling with new acct will make no difference.

Apparently TV records your PC's IP address,.....so the problem remains the same.

unless someone fiound a work around?!

jojker

Let us know if setting up a new account works (since the IP address doesn't change). I'm trying an alternative I had overlooked. TV is still easier to use but we'll see.

@AlexandarP

@AlexandarP wrote:
I have the same problem. Only I use my personal phone to connect to my pc for things such as personal documents and remote shut down. I use the service rarely and ever so often I assist my friends with their pc troubles. I especially needed the service today and my connection kept getting blocked. At some point I got flagged for no clear reason and after two tries and three weeks, I still have yet to get a reply. I might as well create a new account if they dont reply soon. If you get any updates that would be helpful, im curious to know their reasoning behind all the flagging.
Best of luck.
-A

Bankfodder

I have a number of devices all on the same account – same email and password – and I don't have any problem with commercial use. Teamviewer has accepted that my use them all privately.

I can use my desktop PC at home for connecting outwards to help my family and two or three old people that I support – but when I want to access my own PC from one of my devices if I am away somewhere – or even if I am in my own sitting room! - then I get a message saying commercial use suspected and I am given five minutes – if I'm lucky.

I find this pretty amazing that my phone, my laptop, two tablets – can all teamviewer in or out to anyone except to my own home PC. I find it amazing that I can use my own home PC to teamviewer out to people but as soon as I try to teamviewer into my home PC I get blocked.

I have contacted teamviewer about this several times over the past few months and I have had no reply – except two weeks ago I received a form to fill in to confirm that I was a private use – and after that I had nothing further.

I'm nearly 70. I'm a retired teacher. I live on a pension. I don't make money out of computers – and I never have done. I don't make money out of teamviewer.

All I'm asking is that somebody in the teamviewer team finally makes contact and hopefully straightens out this rather illogical situation. – Teamviewer out – yes. Teamviewer in – no.

Thanks

Steve-in-FL

@jojker wrote:
It has been about two months (6-7 weeks) since I submitted an "explanation for use" in the commercial use form. I have received NO REPLY. Nothing what so ever. Please share your experiences and help me try to figure out how to get TV to respond in a timely manner.
How long did they take to respond to you?
What explanation did you give?
Did they approve it?
Do you have pointers for making a submission that gets a response?

I filled in the online form for each of my 13 IDs. They unblocked 12 of those IDs within a few days. The 13th was still blocked. I filled in the online form again with no results. Then I received an email asking me to fill in the "declaration of private use" form. I did so and listed the 13th ID (even though the form doesn't ask for the ID at all). That 13th ID was unblocked within 24 hours.

You ask for pointers, but all I can tell you is what I did. I submitted an online form for each ID I have and on the form listed all of the other IDs, so everything could be cross-referenced, if necessary. I showed the name assigned to each of the IDs. For each ID that "looked" commercial, for example DATASERVER, I explained that it was used only in my home and for a specific, non-commercial purpose. When they asked for the "declaration of private use" form, I also listed the ID and the name assigned. That's it.

All I can say is that it worked for me. But I know that the system is unclear, appears to be arbitrary and is inconsistent. I know that the trigger is not only the IP address, since the ID that originally did not get reset was one of seven in my house, so they all shared the same WAN IP address.

Other people have not been so lucky, with no action of any kind in response to their forms. Can't say why.

TeamViewer has said that school IP addresses are considered commercial. The people caught in that situation can yell all they want on this forum, but that's the rule, as crazy as it appears. And there does not appear to be any way to make that appeal. TeamViewer must have some reason for it, even though it is not apparent.

I consider the unblocking a response, so I was not unhappy that they didn't write me an email when they did that. It's not good public relations, but my concern was unblocking - I consider that the important part of the response. In fact, the only email I did receive, was the one that said I needed to fill in the Declaration of Private Use. The responce I got for that one was, again, unblocking, but no email.

Good luck.

AlexandarP

I have the same problem. Only I use my personal phone to connect to my pc for things such as personal documents and remote shut down. I use the service rarely and ever so often I assist my friends with their pc troubles. I especially needed the service today and my connection kept getting blocked. At some point I got flagged for no clear reason and after two tries and three weeks, I still have yet to get a reply. I might as well create a new account if they dont reply soon. If you get any updates that would be helpful, im curious to know their reasoning behind all the flagging.

Best of luck.

-A

@jojker wrote:
It has been about two months (6-7 weeks) since I submitted an "explanation for use" in the commercial use form. I have received NO REPLY. Nothing what so ever. Please share your experiences and help me try to figure out how to get TV to respond in a timely manner.
How long did they take to respond to you?
What explanation did you give?
Did they approve it?
Do you have pointers for making a submission that gets a response?

I'm a graduate student. My school computer is blocked. I mistakenly sent in a form for my home computer and was approved immediately. I sent the request for my school computer with the same explanation and have heard nothing. Graduate students are students and Washington University in St. Louis is adamant that we are not doing work for money. Currently, we are NOT employees, NOT unionized or able to own our work. This is severely hampering my productivity.
It's pretty clear that doing research projects as a student is a non-commercial use.
Full story:
About two months ago my ability to sign into to my school computer from home was blocked as "commercial use". Because I was not aware of the source of the trouble I submitted a commercial-use form explanation for my home desktop ID. My home computer was immediately re-assigned as non-commercial. I was still blocked because TV was blocking my school computer. I submitted a different request for each computer because I was/am confused about how TV distinguishes the services to block.

jojker

It has been about two months (6-7 weeks) since I submitted an "explanation for use" in the commercial use form. I have received NO REPLY. Nothing what so ever. Please share your experiences and help me try to figure out how to get TV to respond in a timely manner.

How long did they take to respond to you?

What explanation did you give?

Did they approve it?

Do you have pointers for making a submission that gets a response?

I'm a graduate student. My school computer is blocked. I mistakenly sent in a form for my home computer and was approved immediately. I sent the request for my school computer with the same explanation and have heard nothing. Graduate students are students and Washington University in St. Louis is adamant that we are not doing work for money. Currently, we are NOT employees, NOT unionized or able to own our work. This is severely hampering my productivity.

It's pretty clear that doing research projects as a student is a non-commercial use.

Full story:

About two months ago my ability to sign into to my school computer from home was blocked as "commercial use". Because I was not aware of the source of the trouble I submitted a commercial-use form explanation for my home desktop ID. My home computer was immediately re-assigned as non-commercial. I was still blocked because TV was blocking my school computer. I submitted a different request for each computer because I was/am confused about how TV distinguishes the services to block.

Whitedavidp

I hope that someone from TV can help me here. I have already completed the commercial use form online and have completed, signed, and emailed the document titled "declaration of private use". But after many weeks, the problem remains and I have heard nothing back at all.

I support several computers that are my own and those of friends and family. There is no commercial use and never has been any. Out of all these computers, right now only one seems to be having a problem. It is an Android media center box that is used for streaming media and for running my home automation system. None of the other computers on my list seem to have any problems.

Is there some way to find out what might be triggering this false-positive and doing something about it?

Thanks!

alextprice

Hi Yuri and thank you for yoru reply!

When I first encounted this issue I tried the exact solution you outlined. I submitted the ID of host computer and recieved an email about a week later informing me that it had been placed on the clear list for personal use. This course of action did not fix the issue with commercial use being suspected when I used the chrome browser extnesion to control that host computer.

Additionally, if I use other devices to control that computer, I have no issues. This leads me to believe that it is an issue with the chrome browser extension.

If I could find the ID associated with my Chrome Browser Extension I would submit it using the form you suggested, but I have yet to be able to find it. Does it exist?

For more detail, the host computer is a Mac Mini running the latest version of MacOS and the controlling computer is running windows 10 and utilizing the chrome browser extension to gain access to the host.

Thanks in advance!