Serious Discussion US to ban its citizens from using Kaspersky?

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ForgottenSeer 109138

Smells more of “Buy the American” campaign. Nothing new.
You do know there is not a whole lot made in America anymore right? It's out sourced, companies shifted over seas, software/hardware and everything in between imported. Im not exactly sure what they plan to do about all that as they would literally have to shut the whole system down and revamp it. :unsure:😉😁

Just saying!
 
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ForgottenSeer 107474

The discussion started years ago, despite allowing governements to check the code Kaspersky was banned (link)

The open internet never really was completely open (China and North Korea filtering webtraffic), now more and more contries are monitoring internet traffic, some explicitely (e.g Saudi Arabia) and some silently (the green countries on the map below are not really as green as they seem, as disclosed by Snowdon - link}


The EU is also realizing they are to dependant on US based services (link). With geo-political forces pushing the 'who monitors and regulates our information' discussion further and further to the digital world, my guess is that in 20 years or so the open internet will be an semi-open internet with four or five global aliances controling and monitoring their own sub-worlds.

EDIT: to put it into perspective: Social media "show you what you like" AI and interest based content feeding programs, have a much higher impact on what people see and notice of the world. When you like 5 or more cat movies on TikTok or Youtube, your world will narrow down to cat's doing funny stuff.
 
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Szellem

Level 8
Well-known
Apr 15, 2020
362
I feel sorry for Kaspersky. They never found any evidence against Kaspersky. And I'm sure they investigated it hard.
This is the same irrational fear the US has had of Russia for decades. It creates unnecessary and needless conflict. It would be good to accept each other and not just seek conflict. Peace.
 

Trident

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Feb 7, 2023
2,351
This will affect Kaspersky in terms of profits and telemetry, and will reduce the quality of their feeds as well. Companies relying on these feeds will most likely have to subscribe to additional vendors as well.

Kaspersky will have to push harder than ever in the EMEA sector to cover for the losses.

These are the facts unfortunately.
 

SpyNetGirl

Level 3
Well-known
Jan 30, 2023
113
I find this completely stupid, but nothing surprises me since Kaspersky has been blacklisted by the USA since 2017 (Trump did)

But personally, it makes me laugh... Why? In detection alone, Kaspersky is light years ahead of the American AVs (the only one that can still compete with it is Norton).



I think everyone does, because an AV without services or other features is not an antivirus.
Just imagine if you could kill the protection with a simple Taskkill... that would be crazy and the brand would take a hit.

EFI Bootkits are not services, but don't mind me, keep praising russian product 🤷‍♀️
 

Shadowra

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Sep 2, 2021
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EFI Bootkits are not services, but don't mind me, keep praising russian product 🤷‍♀️

I'm not selling anything, I already appreciate your interventions and especially your tool for Microsoft Defender.
Just that I use it and have no problems with it.
If one day I find something better, I'll test the competition ;)
 

Trident

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I think everyone does, because an AV without services or other features is not an antivirus.
Just imagine if you could kill the protection with a simple Taskkill... that would be crazy and the brand would take a hit.
On Windows any background process that has no visible window is called service, on Linux and Unix-like operating systems, it’s called daemon.
It’s impossible to work in the background efficiently without a service/daemon. It is only possible to launch a small agent that displays a tray icon for example.
EFI Bootkits are not services, but don't mind me, keep praising russian product 🤷‍♀️
On this forum, we are not here to praise. We are merely stating the facts and they are:
  • Kaspersky has been around for quite some time and so has Putin. So far there is no evidence that Kaspersky has endangered users privacy and security. There are speculations.
  • There is no evidence that any other company’s software, including the very Microsoft Windows can’t endanger users privacy and security.
Tech firms lately have come under increased scrutiny all over the world. Their modus operandi has been the same 15+ years but only today everything started to become a problem and governments started to put their nose, and wave fingers.
Could it be that they are desperately trying to cover holes in their thinning budgets with lawsuits, bans and whatnot?
Ask yourself this question.
 

PALTO01

Level 1
Jul 7, 2021
24
Why people's have to follow what any Government's or Religions or Financial/Banking sponcered things said them to follow that's that
 
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ForgottenSeer 109138

I joke a lot on these topics simply because at one time it used to be an unspoken rule of thumb in these parts especially because this is a global community, and that rule of thumb was there are two topics to stay clear of here and that's political and religious.

That said, I want to point some things out.

How many users here are running Lenovo computers? Remember when they were in the news because china was adding backdoors.

With just that one example it's not hard to understand all these countries do unsavory things and if the US is at odds with Russia right now and determine this is the best course of action to secure themselves amongst a silent long time running in the background cyberwar, so be it. It has the right too just as these other countries establish things against the US.

Tiktok is another example of issue the US government was on about, with the Chinese.

If you were to look at a total of incidences behind cyber attacks you will quickly see both China and Russia are at the top of the list.

These observations are not based on my liking products, but reality.


Screenshot_20240414-143842.png
 
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Chuck57

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Oct 22, 2018
589
I use Kaspersky Plus. I like Kaspersk Plus, and will continue to use it whether they ban us from using Kaspersky or not - IF I can get updates, obviously.

Next, they'll be telling me I'm not allowed to use WPS Office because it's Chinese, and I will continue using WPS Office because it doesn't need regular updates.
 

rooney49

Level 1
Jun 14, 2023
21
I use Kaspersky Plus. I like Kaspersk Plus, and will continue to use it whether they ban us from using Kaspersky or not - IF I can get updates, obviously.

Next, they'll be telling me I'm not allowed to use WPS Office because it's Chinese, and I will continue using WPS Office because it doesn't need regular updates.
+1 to your inputs. I have license of Kaspersky Standard and still have more than 500 days left on it. Plan to continue using it. I may shift to F-secure Total afterwards, but will wait for Kaspersky's license to expire.
 

Zorro

Level 9
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Jun 11, 2019
408
A purely political decision, as well as assistance in the fight against a competitor for American antiviruses. And if such a ban is justified for government agencies, then for an ordinary user, this is an example of dictatorship on the part of the state under the pretext of "security for citizens."
Every user has the right to use in their daily life the antivirus that they consider the most optimal for themselves in terms of protection, cost and ease of use.
 

jamey910111

Level 2
Jun 7, 2024
90
First the US made up stuff about things that didn't exist - example: WMDS in Iraq. Since it made up so much stuff, no one believes it anymore, i mean that strategy backfired - the new strategy now is to conduct undemocratic actions in the name of 'democracy' over nothing, essentially no actually threats from kaspersky were provided, after more than a decade, they could not conjur anything because nothing existed, so they said we are banning kaspersky because it's dangerous but we don't have any evidence to provide anythign we say.

This is indeed a smarter strategy - refer to a non-existent threat, why? Because it's harder to counter .With WMDs in Iraq you can always point and say where are these WMDs?? - but when u accuse Kaspersky over nothing, i.e., Kaspersky is evil, at some point in the future it will haunt us, 'but I got 0 evidence about anything I say', it's actually a much smarter strategy. Same thing happened with TikTok of course.
 

Marko :)

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Aug 12, 2015
1,251
Here is my take on this:

I am usually against any company ban if it's doing a good job and not scamming their customers. I was against Huawei ban because none of the investigations showed that China used Huawei technology for spying. And while it's true China isn't exactly the most friendly country to countries around the world, they usually are just looking for their own benefit. And while it's true that they have terrible record regarding privacy in general, I really do think they haven't used it for spying on users in the entire world. The sole purpose of Trump's Huawei ban was to prevent China from winning in 5G race. But I am in favor of Kaspersky ban and here's why.

First and foremost, Kaspersky is a business of great importance to Russian government. They are, what we would call here produljena ruka (lit. extended arm) of Russian government and intelligence services as it was confirmed multiple times. If I remember correctly, they admitted having ties to the Russian military which is currently committing crimes in Ukraine. Just for that reason, I'd refuse to use any of their products. By paying for their product, you're are literally financing their terrorist activity and genocide. This is also why I refuse to use any Chinese made software. Trust me, before I start using any product, I always investigate company behind it. If I see Chinese company, I just skip it and look for an alternative.

Many of you are saying "I'll keep using Kaspersky because it's the best, and has best protection". This might be true, but do you know why? Because Russian hackers actually made the modern malware. So if they made it, of course Russian antivirus will have the best knowledge of how to block it. Seriously, have you ever wondered why many versions of ransomware refuse to do any damage if it finds itself on a PC with set Russian language and/or keyboard layout? It's because these are produced for international market, not for local one. Russia and China are among the top countries known for their cybercrimes. Take that into consideration as well.

And lastly, Kaspersky is a company contributing to Russian government's budget which spends a lot of money on their atrocities in Ukraine. By purchasing their product, part of your money goes directly to financing the war. As long as we do business with Russian companies and Russia will be able to afford the war, the horrific pictures and videos from Ukraine will keep coming on daily basis. The war can stop immediately if every country in the world just stopped doing business with Russia and their companies. Kaspersky is just the start. I mean, when Russia invaded Ukraine, they never mentioned how they are against the war. They literally just said how they are monitoring the situation in Ukraine. And then for contrast, just look at the AdGuard, which used to be Russian company. They immediately voiced their disagreement and even relocated their company to Cyprus. Despite their employees being from the each side of the front line. If I remember correctly, they also offered their employees relocation as well. They are an example how the company should behave.

Why I'm saying this? My country was in the same situation in the 90s as Ukraine right now, although with less powerful enemy. And when the war started, we didn't even have an army, let alone weapons to defend. Heck, UN even put embargo on us so countries were forbidden from selling us weapons. To make the situation worse, we literally had the enemy on the inside because all of the military complexes here were under JNA. This is also why the war in Ukraine shocked us more then any other country in Europe, because of how similar it is. Siege of Mariupol reopened the memories of Vukovar and Sarajevo. For that reason, I just can't use any product made in Russia and I'll support every single sanction or ban put on Russia. Because the evil must be stopped and nothing could change my stance on this topic.
 
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