I’m not sure if this is the right subreddit, but with the accusations of Kaspersky stealing data and the shutdown of its operations in the U.S., I’m worried about a possible drop in quality. Even if a drop in the quality of their products isn’t so likely, is it advisable to pay for an annual antivirus subscription (considering that, where I live, purchasing power is low)?
The only thing that would cause a wide drop in quality is if Kaspersky’s team were recruited by their peers or the management had an internal shuffling (like in Gen Digital). Otherwise, nothing will affect them other than searing through the painful PR as of present.
If you are remarking about how they might be affected by the database drop, nope. It’s their researcher’s brains that got them to where they are today. I might point you to Norton or McAfee for the large amount of paid users they had… what about it despite the data they stored? That should clear the air about your worries.
Hello,
There’s really no way to tell what is going to happen in the future with any company or its software, especially given this unusual situation.
I would suggest checking test results in a few months and see how things stand. Until then, everything is speculation and guesswork.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
UltraAV is the new Kaspersky since the company delivered it, and it’s definitely a quality drop. Many users outside the US were affected for unexplained reasons.
Your doubt is understandable. But Kaspersky is still one of the best for malware protection. You might want to think about whether you really need all the features of the paid version. If not, stick with the free one.
Just avoid it since its under russian governments control since it operates from rhere, no amount of saying we don’t work with the government means they actually don’t work with the government. Use windows defender, or if you wanna pay that badly eset, but again, defender is more than enough and ublock origin since it got malware filter.
What do you mean by new Kaspersky? Isn’t Kaspersky no longer supported?
I would bet the unexpected reasons were that they used US keys for activating.
Don’t know what plankton is talking about, but Kaspersky is still alive and well, and my guess is quality won’t drop.
However if you’re in the US they shoved us off to some other shitty company. Not sure how it got installed on my laptop, gonna guess my wife, but my man pc still has Kaspersky and I just VPN outside US to update the database.
Some (many?) Kaspersky users in the US were migrated to UltraAV in Sept. UltraAV itself is not made or operated by Kaspersky.
Other Kas users in the US were not migrated, for reasons yet unclear. Kas officially is not supported, as you said, but some people who bought licenses through Amazon or Newegg still receive signature updates in the US the same as before.
There should be no expected drop in quality for Kaspersky itself. As for whether you should pay for an annual AV subscription, that depends. I’ve bought Kas licenses from both Amazon and Newegg, for a fraction of what a license from the official site would cost, and none of the recent drama has mattered.
But is Kaspersky not supported in the United States?
(I don’t know if the translation was understandable, I’m using Google Translate)
The translation is fine, no worries.
Kaspersky is not allowed by the US govt to sell licenses or provide product updates or antivirus signature updates to users in the US, so you’re correct, officially they’re not supported here.
But the outcome so far in the real world has been a little different. For whatever reason, some users in the US still can get updates, whether because of where they bought the Kaspersky license from, because they use a VPN, or a few other possible methods.