Some Americans are still using anti-virus software made by the Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Labs despite the sale and provision of its products having been prohibited in the US, according to a TechCrunch report published on Tuesday.
The ban was put in place in June over alleged security risks, forcing the Russian company to wind down its US operations.
According to the report, some American users have nevertheless found ways to get around the restrictions. TechCrunch approached people posting on Reddit claiming to be still using the Russian-made software. Such users said they were skeptical of the reasons behind the ban.
“It’s well-known to be the best [antivirus] in the world and has a long track record,” one US-based Reddit customer told TechCrunch in a direct message. “There’s 0 actual evidence of it being ‘spyware’ and I can’t just blindly believe something that has no evidence supporting it,” the user added.
Another Reddit user, who claimed to be still using Kaspersky anti-virus from New York, said that he was not worried about the allegations that Kaspersky was stealing sensitive data, noting, “it’s a nice product.”
The users explained to TechCrunch that they purchased their license or key prior to the ban and were using a VPN or had manually added a non-US server to the list of update servers.
One customer claimed to have bought an international license key on eBay while adding an update server outside the US in the Kaspersky app to continue receiving security updates.
Asked what they would do once their license key expires, the users said they would either switch to a different provider or just continue using Kaspersky if the VPN option works well.
In 2017, the US Department of Homeland Security banned all federal agencies from using Kaspersky software, citing national security concerns, although no evidence was provided. Company founder and CEO Eugene Kaspersky denounced the move as “baseless paranoia at best” at the time. The company filed a lawsuit, but it was later dismissed in court.
In June, while announcing the “first of its kind” ban against Kaspersky, Washington argued the company threatens US national security and users’ privacy because it is based in Russia.
In late September, Kaspersky was forced to uninstall its software on the computers of its American users and replace it with a new antivirus program called UltraAV. Many customers were “surprised and aghast” that they were not asked to give their consent to the change, TechCrunch wrote.
Founded in 1997, Kaspersky is headquartered in Moscow. It says it operates in more than 200 countries and territories and has 400 million users around the world.