Some Americans continue to use Kaspersky antivirus despite the US government’s ban

In late September, Kaspersky forcibly uninstalled and replaced a brand new antivirus program called UltraAV on the computers of roughly a million Americans, lots of whom were surprised and dismayed that that they had not been asked to consent to the change. The move was the final result of the US government’s ban on all sales of Kaspersky software in the country and – at the very least in theory – spelled the end of Kaspersky in America.

But not everyone in the US has given up on Russian antivirus. TechCrunch has learned that some Americans have found ways to circumvent the ban and continue to use Kaspersky’s antivirus program.

Several people living in the US claimed in Reddit posts that they were claiming to be Kaspersky customers. When TechCrunch asked them about their motivations, their reasons ranged from skepticism about why they were banned or had already paid for the product, to simply preferring the product over competitors.

“It is widely referred to as the best (antivirus) in the world and has an extended history. There isn’t any actual evidence that that is ‘spyware’ and I am unable to just blindly consider in something that has no evidence of it,” a US-based Reddit user going by the username Blippyz told TechCrunch in a direct message.

Another Reddit user named YouKnowWho_13, who still uses antivirus software from New York-based Kaspersky, said they weren’t concerned about allegations that Kaspersky abused access to some Americans’ computers to send sensitive data back to the Russian government.

“Hey, I’m just a cashier…” they told TechCrunch, suggesting they weren’t an interesting goal for cyber spies. adding that the ban on the sale of Kaspersky products was “a little too harsh” and unnecessary. “(I) have been used to this for 10 years. Force of habit haha. It’s a nice product.”

The way these users circumvent the sales ban is two-fold. First, they purchased a license or key before the ban was implemented, which suggests they didn’t violate the sales ban or sanctions by sending money to the Moscow-based cybersecurity company. Secondly, they’re using a VPN or have manually added a non-US server to the update server list, which suggests that in Kaspersky’s eyes they will not be actually US users.

Kaspersky didn’t respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

Avi Fleischer, a longtime Kaspersky user who lives in Brooklyn, New York, told TechCrunch that he still uses the software on his home computer. Fleischer explained that after the ban got here into force “Kaspersky Security Network” – service “designed to receive and process complex global cyber threat data” — became unavailable, but was still able to obtain virus definition updates by pointing the update server to a server outside the United States.

“Now it can automatically update virus definitions,” Fleischer said, adding that he doesn’t use a VPN.

YouKnowWho_13 said he purchased a global license key on eBay. Like others, they said they added an update server positioned outside the United States to the Kaspersky app to continue receiving security updates.

Once the license key expires, YouKnowWho_13 said it might switch to competing antivirus software ESET or Bitdefender.

Another Reddit user, Das1996, told TechCrunch that he uses a VPN to download updates and has a license key that expires in about three or 4 months. Once this happens, they are saying, they may determine what to do next. But “if the VPN option works well, I will continue to use it,” Das1996 said.

Domingothegamer, Reddit user who searched for assistance on the website after they couldn’t update their Kaspersky software, he said he still had a three-year license with two years left, for 10 devices. For them, leaving Kaspersky “seems like a big loss just because of the ban.”

They said they didn’t even need to use a VPN and that apart from adding latest servers to get updates, “it’s just a regular service.”