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At 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.
But not everyone in the U.S. has given up on the Russian-made antivirus. Some Americans have found ways to get around the ban and are still using Kaspersky’s antivirus, TechCrunch has learned.
Several people who live in the U.S. said in posts on Reddit that they are holding out as Kaspersky customers. When TechCrunch asked them about their motivations, their reasons range from being skeptical of the reasons behind the ban, or having paid for the product already, to simply preferring the product over its rivals.
“It’s well-known to be the best [antivirus] in the world and has a long track record. There’s 0 actual evidence of it being ‘spyware’ and I can’t just blindly believe something that has no evidence supporting it,” a U.S.-based Reddit user who goes by Blippyz told TechCrunch in a direct message.
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.
“Hey I’m just a cashier…,” they told TechCrunch, implying that they are not an interesting target for cyberspies. adding that the ban on Kaspersky sales was “a bit too harsh” and unnecessary. “[I] used to it for 10 years. Force of habit haha. It’s a nice product.”
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.
Kaspersky did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
Avi Fleischer, a long-time Kaspersky user who lives in Brooklyn, NY, told TechCrunch that he is also still using the software on his home computer. Fleischer explained that once the ban came into full effect, the “Kaspersky Security Network” — a service “designed to receive and process complex global cyberthreat data” — became unavailable, but he was able to still get updates for virus definitions by pointing the update server to one outside the United States.
“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.
Another Reddit user, Das1996, told TechCrunch that they are using a VPN to get updates and have a license key that expires in around three or four months. Once that happens, they said, they will decide what to do. But “if the VPN option works well, I’ll continue to use ’em,” said Das1996.
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.”
