Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn't thought of whether or why it was closed source! I've seen nothing but good intentions from Kitboga and his team, but I can't know everything obviously so I'm glad you're pointing that out!

Yeah!! Kitboga actually answered this question on a recent stream, I know for sure the premium version you can whitelist any site. Not sure about the free version! Kitboga said it's the most common question he gets 😂

Aaaahhhh same!!! His face is in all my screenshots because I always have his videos on in the background 😆

I hear you, monthly subscriptions can be a killer financially. The team that made this knew that releasing the free version might hurt their finances in the long run but they genuinely want to help protect people from being scammed.

I will say the paid version is as cheap as they could possibly make it, they may have to up the price in the future to keep paying staff but I appreciate how much they're trying to make it accessible.

If I was in a position to I'd pay for the subs for my parents and grandparents (maybe in the future), but at least I was able to get them the free version for now!

Someone needs to curate and maintain the blocklist. Paying for software once is a surefire way to have it stop blocking anything a few years down the line because the company stopped updating their lists when the sales ran out.

If you pay a set fee for something that requires continuous maintainance you're either overpaying enough to compensate for cash flow interruptions or you're at risk of the software being discontinued. The latter is especially true if you're getting stuff for free, but in that case you're also not entitled to any service.

As for "why not block teamviewer at the router": because then anydesk will still work. And if you block anydesk, Microsoft Remote Support will work. And if you block Microsoft Remote Support, RustDesk will work. And if you try to block every single RustDesk server, grandpa's internet probably no longer works anymore, because you've just blocked off every data center in the world.

Ok, gramps. I blocked TeamViewer on the router to stop scammers.

Two months later, gramps has a small problem with the internet connection. The first thing the helpdesk tells him to do is factory reset the router.

Gramps gets scammed through TeamViewer.

Although I agree with you on subscriptions in general, it is not quite as easy as blocking just one site. There are more popular remote desktop software than a regular person could list easily.

But maybe the good news is, that if blocking is enough for you, that's in the free version, right?

I've never heard of this, I'm gonna look it up and learn more!

Pihole runs on a 10-15 dollar computer (raspberry pi) and blocks anything you want, and is free as in freedom software. It is also zero cost.