Alternatives to Kaspersky

[stockhausen]

I have been using and recommending Kaspersky for a number of years but am concerned about recent suggestions that it may not be as secure as I thought it was - the US Government has banned its use in Government Agencies and it has been removed from shelves in some major US stores.

Looking around I get the impression that Bitdefender, F-Secure and Panda are considered to be superior to Kaspersky. Does anyone here have any experience of any of these?

 

[Caged]

Just use Windows Defender, keep your software up-to-date, don't install Flash, use an ad blocker, don't run pirate software.

 

[gpuerrilla]

Before I had a look at Kaspersky I was using Panda which I can highly recommend.

After reading the shenanigans though, as an AV product I would not be too paranoid about them. If anything since the bad rep they will only tighten their game.

 

[Danny75]

The other side of the coin is that Kaspersky has regularly been finding and protecting against NSA Malware (see NSA Equation group/Kaspersky), and the Yanks aren't happy about it. I know one side is guilty. I'd like to think Kaspersky are professional and wouldn't do the same. But all I know is that I don't know, it's naive to be naive lol, and they could well be guilty of unprofessional conduct themselves. But we live in a very hypocritical time. Google, Facebook, NSA and their ilk the biggest offenders, and accusing others of what they are guilty of themselves.

Kaspersky alleges that their anti-virus detected malware on an NSA employee's computer, took samples (normal practice), but because the malware was actually NSA's (or at least some of it, other stuff had to do with a pirated copy of Microsoft Office apparently), it's being painted as Russian hacking. They're either lying, or quite simply the Yanks are super embarrassed about it and deflecting with accusations and bans.

 

[stockhausen]

Thanks for all that, particularly (but not only) Danny75.

To be honest, I am inclined to believe that the criticism of Kaspersky is probably based on commercial considerations by competitors and I am happy to keep using it - I don't really think that the FSB, the NSA or GCHQ are going to be all that interested in my holiday snaps.

Kaspersky it is.

 

[gpuerrilla]

The story got really interesting along with the ccleaner hack. Sadly theres no developments to keep the pace moving. I am still using the free version of kaspersky, like you stockhausen I have nothing of importance to society so will not be paranoid about it. If anything I would be more worried about what Facebook is collecting and googles intentions.

I chuckled at the updates I received from google telling me my commute home had traffic hot spots, blatently scraping anything these days.