Some Americans are still using Kaspersky’s antivirus despite U.S. government ban
Reading Time: 2 minutesAt the end of September, Kaspersky forcibly uninstalled and replaced itself with a new antivirus called UltraAV on the computers of around a million Americans, many of whom were surprised and aghast that they were not asked to give their consent for the change. The move was the end result of the U.S. government ban on all sales of Kaspersky software in the country and — at least in theory — marked the end of Kaspersky in America.
Another Reddit user, nicknamed YouKnowWho_13, who continues to use Kaspersky antivirus from New York, said they are not worried about the allegations that Kaspersky has abused its access to some Americans’ computers to siphon off sensitive data back to the Russian government.
The way these users are getting around the sales ban is twofold. First, they purchased their license or key prior to the ban, meaning they haven’t violated the sales ban and sanctions by sending money to the Moscow-based cybersecurity company. Second, they use a VPN or have manually added a non-U.S. server to the list of update servers, which means that in the eyes of Kaspersky, they effectively are not U.S. users.
‘And now it’s able to update the virus definitions automatically,’ Fleischer said, adding that he is not using a VPN.
YouKnowWho_13 said they bought an international license key off of eBay. Like others, they said they added an update server that’s outside of the United States in the Kaspersky app to continue receiving security updates.
Once their license key expires, YouKnowWho_13 said they will switch to antivirus competitors ESET or Bitdefender.
Domingothegamer, a Reddit user who sought help on the website when they couldn’t update their Kaspersky software, said that they still have a three-year license, with two years left, for 10 devices. For them, leaving Kaspersky ‘feels like a big waste just because of the ban.’
They said they don’t even need to use a VPN, and that apart from adding new servers to get the updates, ‘it’s just a service like usual.’
Ref: techcrunch
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