Kaspersky is pretty much banned in the US because of the fact that it’s a Russian company, and the US and Russia don’t have the best relationship. So it appears that due to that, anyone who runs Kaspersky might have this happen to them:
Starting Thursday, Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky deleted its anti-malware software from customers’ computers across the United States and automatically replaced it with UltraAV’s antivirus solution.
This comes after Kaspersky decided to shut down its U.S. operations and lay off U.S.-based employees in response to the U.S. government adding Kaspersky to the Entity List, a catalog of “foreign individuals, companies, and organizations deemed a national security concern” in June.
And:
In early September, Kaspersky also emailed customers, assuring them they would continue receiving “reliable cybersecurity protection” from UltraAV (owned by Pango Group) after Kaspersky stopped selling software and updates for U.S. customers.
However, those emails failed to inform users that Kaspersky’s products would be abruptly deleted from their computers and replaced with UltraAV without warning.
If I woke up one morning and my anti virus software were just replaced randomly. I would be really freaked out by that. I can look at this both ways. On one hand, Kaspersky needed to do the right thing to make sure that their customers in the US are secure. But on the other hand, the way they did it doesn’t really sit right with me. So as a result, I really don’t know how to feel about this. But strangely, I’m not done yet:
To make things worse, while some users could uninstall UltraAV using the software’s uninstaller, those who tried removing it using uninstall apps saw it reinstalled after a reboot, causing further concerns about a potential malware infection.
Some also found UltraVPN installed, likely because they had a Kaspersky VPN subscription.
This doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. Neither does this:
Not much is known about UltraAV besides being part of Pango Group, which controls multiple VPN brands (e.g., Hotspot Shield, UltraVPN, and Betternet) and Comparitech (a VPN software review website).
This seems a bit suspect to me. Personally, if I were affected by this, I’d be removing this software as quickly as possible possible and replacing it with some other anti virus software that I could trust. Because to be honest, I am not sure that I can trust these guys.
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This entry was posted on September 24, 2024 at 11:05 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Kaspersky. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Kaspersky Deletes Itself And Installs UltraAV On Computers In The US…. WTF?
Kaspersky is pretty much banned in the US because of the fact that it’s a Russian company, and the US and Russia don’t have the best relationship. So it appears that due to that, anyone who runs Kaspersky might have this happen to them:
Starting Thursday, Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky deleted its anti-malware software from customers’ computers across the United States and automatically replaced it with UltraAV’s antivirus solution.
This comes after Kaspersky decided to shut down its U.S. operations and lay off U.S.-based employees in response to the U.S. government adding Kaspersky to the Entity List, a catalog of “foreign individuals, companies, and organizations deemed a national security concern” in June.
And:
In early September, Kaspersky also emailed customers, assuring them they would continue receiving “reliable cybersecurity protection” from UltraAV (owned by Pango Group) after Kaspersky stopped selling software and updates for U.S. customers.
However, those emails failed to inform users that Kaspersky’s products would be abruptly deleted from their computers and replaced with UltraAV without warning.
If I woke up one morning and my anti virus software were just replaced randomly. I would be really freaked out by that. I can look at this both ways. On one hand, Kaspersky needed to do the right thing to make sure that their customers in the US are secure. But on the other hand, the way they did it doesn’t really sit right with me. So as a result, I really don’t know how to feel about this. But strangely, I’m not done yet:
To make things worse, while some users could uninstall UltraAV using the software’s uninstaller, those who tried removing it using uninstall apps saw it reinstalled after a reboot, causing further concerns about a potential malware infection.
Some also found UltraVPN installed, likely because they had a Kaspersky VPN subscription.
This doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. Neither does this:
Not much is known about UltraAV besides being part of Pango Group, which controls multiple VPN brands (e.g., Hotspot Shield, UltraVPN, and Betternet) and Comparitech (a VPN software review website).
This seems a bit suspect to me. Personally, if I were affected by this, I’d be removing this software as quickly as possible possible and replacing it with some other anti virus software that I could trust. Because to be honest, I am not sure that I can trust these guys.
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This entry was posted on September 24, 2024 at 11:05 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Kaspersky. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.