Teamviewer Risks When Connecting to Another Computer

Iaseenisben
Iaseenisben Posts: 1
in General questions

Are there any risks to be aware of if you remote into another person's computer via their Teamviewer Partner ID and password?

Any recommended settings to choose when remoting into an unknown computer?

All of the searches I have tried focus on the risks of allowing someone to access your computer, but I'm curious if there is anything one should watch out for if you are accessing someone else's computer.

For example, I saw one comment that depending on your settings, the host computer may receive what is in your clipboard (which may be username or password info if you use a password manager).

The context is a potential client that I have never worked with before has asked me to do Excel work on their computer. They don't want to send the file, they want to send me their Teamviewer Partner ID and password so I can do the work on their computer via Teamviewer. And out of an abundance of caution I want to make sure I am not unwittingly giving them access to my computer or files.

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Answers

  • Archigos
    Archigos Posts: 30 ✭✭

    Being that it's an unknown computer, there's always a small risk factor. As long as you turn off Clipboard Sync and do not try any file transfers between systems, you shouldn't have to worry about viruses or spyware.

    The main thing is, if it's an unknown computer, it sounds more like this would be commercial use and not in the free terms, so you'd want to get a license first before you do anything or risk having your account shut off for not getting it.

  • jabbarKhan12
    jabbarKhan12 Posts: 1 ✭

    @Iaseenisben In theory, the destination computer could exploit the computer via a vulnerability in TeamViewer that's connecting to it. That kind of thing has happened in the past...

    LINK

  • AmirkhanInd
    AmirkhanInd Posts: 1 ✭

    @Iaseenisben I use TeamViewer to connect to a machine (Ubuntu 20.04) that not always have a graphical user session started and I noticed that even with teamviewerd running the machine is offline. I fixed the problem running:

    sudo teamviewer setup

    From teamviewer --help:

    teamviewer setup Configure headless modes (non-gui/console)

    Without running this, the only way for me was to start manually a graphical user session and open the TeamViewer GUI on the host I wanted to use.

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