Advice Request Kaspersky virus protection – BSI warns against the use of products

[cruelsister]

Not to nitpick, but Eugene K was a KGB graduate, and currently Kaspersky Labs is cozy with the FSB (K's think tank is down the street and around the corner, actually).

 

[Slerion]

German citizens told to uninstall Kaspersky antivirus

Russian biz founder calls it 'an insult'

www.theregister.com

Maybe wrong forum part wasnt really sure where else to post

Related bigger Reddit discussions

 

[Sammo]

I already replaced it with Bitdefender Total Security

 

[oldschool]

Maybe wrong forum part wasnt really sure where else to post

Take your pick :
Q&A - Kaspersky virus protection – BSI warns against the use of products
Battle - Alternative Required. Kaspersky Internet Security vs...?
Kaspersky: "Biggest change in whole history of our products..."
News - Russia creates its own TLS certificate authority to bypass sanctions

 

[oldschool]

I already replaced it with Bitdefender Total Security

I didn't need to do anything as I use Micro$oft Total Defender. Just kidding ...

 

[Tutman]

Well the poop is hitting the fan. I noticed the other thread was locked or deleted.

 

[HarborFront]

How about Adguard since it's a Russian product?

 

[L0ckJaw]

The Germans want everyone to use G-Data * Joke mode

 

[motox781]

How about Adguard since it's a Russian product?

Isn't Adguard headquartered in Cyprus now since 2014?

AdGuard - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[HarborFront]

Isn't Adguard headquartered in Cyprus now since 2014?

AdGuard - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

I think it has Russian roots

 

[jogs]

I think everybody should first uninstall Windows.

 

[harlan4096]

I believe that a series of gratuitous personal comments are being poured here, conjectures without proven facts, judging people by their past, and they are being taken as true facts

Also think EK ceased to be directly involved in the development and management of the company many years ago, it is true that in recent years he has been travelling around the world, appearing in some technology conventions, etc. but more as a mere face of marketing, and not making the big decisions and guidelines of the company.

 

[SpiderWeb]

Also just discussed here since 4 hours ago (Auto Translated):

Kaspersky Support Forum

Kaspersky forum where Kaspersky product users and experts share tips, advice, help and solutions in your preferred language

community.kaspersky.com

View attachment 264973
One member thinks BSI tends to share "fearmongering".
Link in the screenshot: https://support.kaspersky.com/faq/2022hotline
(This link has some answers for something like "Is Kaspersky could be forced against their will?" that emerges from the concern of the current situation).


If this will end up in the implementation of a boycott widely on the German side, Kaspersky will lose a lot of its user bases and revenue but they still say "Kaspersky’s business operations remain stable" in the FAQs link.
Kaspersky has a total user of 400 million. By looking at usage by the country for most common and widely used processes in various versions of Windows:
Among them, up to 48 million are from Germany and up to 60 million are from Russia. Not far from "Almost 80% of Kaspersky’s operations are international".

I don't think it's fearmongering. But what he is saying is true for the entire antivirus industry. AVs have way too many system privileges, it's ridiculous. They can literally see and log everything you are doing and nobody is questioning why we are allowing these AVs to know that much and not put any safeguards or provide transparency on where our data is going.

 

[Rollers127]

All things Kaspersky deleted here, including Kaspersky account. All sanctions together will hopefully help to put an end to this mindless invasion

 

[superleeds27]

German citizens told to uninstall Kaspersky antivirus

Russian biz founder calls it 'an insult'

www.theregister.com

Maybe wrong forum part wasnt really sure where else to post

Related bigger Reddit discussions

Reddit is such a scary place!

 

[Stelica]

I am from Romania and for us Russia has meant over 50 years of Bolshevik terror. I haven't installed and will never install Kaspersy, especially since we have Bitdefender!

 

[Andytay70]

going back a few years when i used to download a lot of torrent stuff I often ran Virus total and Kaspersky never flagged it but a good 50% did? Does Kaspersky really work?

 

[Slerion]

the warning from the bsi is a more "could be" warning , i mean that way its Logical a AV is a tool which got full System access can delete , theoretically also change data and upload data.

it "could" be heavily abused.

 

[superleeds27]

Mentioned on the BBC website too now! The same article really, plus a response from Kaspersky

Germany warns against Russian anti-virus use

The country's cyber watchdog warns against using Kaspersky's anti-virus products.

www.bbc.co.uk

Kaspersky told BBC News the warning had been "made on political grounds" and it had no ties to the Russian government.

Kaspersky said it would seek clarification from the BSI on its decision, which was "not based on a technical assessment of Kaspersky products", and how to address its concerns.

 

[SeriousHoax]

going back a few years when i used to download a lot of torrent stuff I often ran Virus total and Kaspersky never flagged it but a good 50% did? Does Kaspersky really work?

Kaspersky is a piracy friendly AV. What I mean is, it only detects real malware that damages the system. It doesn't usually detect cracktool/hacktool/keygen that only let's say activate a certain paid program but don't do anything harmful. The things that you downloaded probably were safe, those were not malicious, so Kaspersky didn't detect those.