If your considering using a VPN solution with built-in anti-virus, NordVPN is your best choice. There are multiple web reviews to this fact. Here's one: https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-and-antivirus . Of note; The important point to note about VPN's w/built-in AV is they only protect against web based threats and none have off-line scanning capability to name one missing protection mechanism.
NO!!! That is NOT important at all!!!! You are trying to interject VPNs into this issue and they have absolutely nothing to do with this issue! Nothing at all!!! This is ALL ABOUT stopping Kaspersky - the company - from doing business (selling their products) in the US. NOTHING MORE! It does not matter who has a VPN or who has the best VPN. It does not matter which program provides the best protection. Your concerns, while real, are totally immaterial to the whole point which is, once again, kicking Kaspersky out of the US market. TO BE SURE, I am NOT disputing or disagreeing any of your points about UltraAV or UltraVPN. Are there better alternatives? IMO, absolutely! But NOT THE POINT! The point is to stop Kaspersky from selling their products in the US.
You should shut up your rabid Russo phobia, this is a tech forum. Oh, btw, he who abuses of bold, capital letters, exclamations points... is usually the one who's not sure of what he defends.
Whoaa ! ~ Funny Image Removed As per Policy ~ The main focus of the Kaspersky ban issue is no longer "stopping Kaspersky" -- Kaspersky has been stopped. The main focus now has most recently shifted to the question of what do those who have been relying on Kaspersky now use as a security solution. Kaspersky has made arangements for its current USA users to be migrated to a relatively unknown VPN that includes in its suite an AV named UltraAV. So to suggest a VPN security suite that a member believes to be superior is now relevant. My 2 cents -- Troubled by needless acrimony between members.
It may have evolved to that, but not by the thread's OP. It has been drawn off topic by those who don't want to stay on topic and want to discuss something else. The OP started this topic with a link that reported US banning Kaspersky. So if you @hawki wish to moderate this thread, maybe you should help move it back on topic by suggesting those who want to discuss VPN alternatives start their own thread for just that. You make a post just to criticize another, exclaiming this is a tech site, then offer zero tech advice? Did you even see anything in my last post about Russia? Nope. This is not me spewing anything. I was only explaining the technical facts as to why this migration to UltraAV came about - which clearly follows the OP's topic.
Thread is On a 24 Hour Time Out! If The Personal Bickering Continues After It Opens, Posts Will Be Removed!
In addition to making some money from the exit, I believe Kaspersky also wanted a clean break. Since existing US customers of Kaspersky are immune from prosecution if they continue using their already paid product after the ban, some users most likely were planning to use VPNs to get software and virus definition updates from Kaspersky after the ban. An associate of mine who just renewed a 2-year, 5-PC license this March was going to do the same until his subscription expired. And I know of 2-3 more people who were planning something similar. This step from Kaspersky ensures that existing US users will no longer be able to connect to Kaspersky servers, plus Kaspersky will make some money from this UltraAV deal.
I wonder if that will work. I'd think there would be language and region codes in the product to make sure you were getting the correct updates. I don't know that a VPN would change that.
Immune from prosecution? That was never an issue. Let's be careful not to spread false rumors. The ban does not make it illegal for any private user to continue to use the software they already own. The ban, as reported by CNN, simply, "prohibits Kaspersky Lab and all of its affiliates, subsidiaries and parent company from providing cyber security and anti-virus software anywhere in the United States,” and it reports, "Previously installed software from the company can continue to be used but it will not be possible to download updates." Bottom line, Kaspersky is banned from selling (or giving away) their products or providing any updates to that software in the US. The ban is on Kaspersky, not private citizens. This is in addition to the ban previously imposed by the previous administration, on the use of their software on federal government computers. Yeah, I don't see how a VPN would either. Not sure language would matter since English is used in other countries. But region might. But, IMO, I think users should heed the message behind the ban. Yes, Kaspersky anti-malware is a good security solution against malware, but at what cost? The ban is for a good reason. It is common knowledge and a sad fact that those governments ARE conducting cyberwarfare against free-world democracies and their private citizens - us. And I note it is not the citizens of those countries - they often are victims too - it is the governments of those countries. And there are many equally good alternative solutions. Sure. I see nothing wrong with that either. Kaspersky is a business. The US is a big market and the ban will result in a big loss of revenue - for years to come. So why not try to make money on the sale. That just makes sound business sense. And a clean break makes sense too - to at least give the appearance all ties back are severed. It should be pointed out that companies like Kaspersky and many other businesses based in these countries, are often innocent patsies - where, by law, they must comply with whatever their governments wants. This is just like Chinese businesses. TikTok's parent company, ByteDance for example, is forced to hand over all it's users' personal data to the Chinese government. The problem is not with TikTok itself. The problem is the government behind it - again, not the people. And it could very well be that these governments have infiltrated these companies in a clandestine manner by "planting" agents who then insert malware or gather information without the company's knowledge - perhaps so the company can claim "plausible deniability".
When you travel to other countries with an antivirus installed on your PC. The AV continues to update and download software and virus definitions. This applies to all AVs. They are not Geo locked. So if a US user connects with a Canadian IP, any AV installed on the system will update without any issues. I just tested this with the AV installed on my PC. I used a VPN to connect from Hong Kong and ran an update check. It worked fine and the AV even downloaded an update.
True to a point I would assume. Might be different if that product was banned in a particular region. I know some vendors will invalidate your license if it was meant to be sold cheap in one region and you are not in that region. Some licenses are only valid in some countries. I still assume that if you are a US user a VPN will not help you if they go to the effort to block you for having a US product installed. Not that I greatly care, I have not used their products in quite a while now. We will probably have to wait until the time comes to see how hard they will actually try to enforce this. They may not, but I absolutely believe they could. I've seen posts here where users (of various products) have had their license blacklisted after traveling because the region didn't match the product version. Not wanting to sound argumentative, I'm just curious of the technical limitations of identifying who is using what from where.
Not sure it will be hard. I f you go out to the Kaspersky site now from a US based system it clearly says, "Purchase is unavailable for US customers." The option to download is not available. So through attrition alone, it will fade away here.
This is has to be some joke, the name Pango UltraAV sounds like it's some rogue AV company. You can't make this stuff up, and why no screenshots?
FYI/FWIW: "Q: Where are your VPN servers located? A: Kaspersky VPN uses servers provided by our partner that offer connections via more than 100 virtual locations around the globe. The unlimited version offers the very fastest connection speeds of up to 10 Gbps... The servers are managed by our VPN vendor Pango GmbH and its affiliates, including Pango, located in Switzerland and the United States..." "https://www.kaspersky.com/vpn-secure-connection-transparency-security
Huh? And what does a legitimate, mainstream company "sound" like? Kaspersky? AVG? Avast? Comodo? BullGuard? Lookout? Yeah, I gotta go along with you on this one. There really is not a lot of information about the company or their programs - other than UltraVPN. There are some screenshots out there, but it seem they are on other sites, not ther own site. That seems odd. You go out to their website here, and it shows what appear to be links to techradar, cybernews Trustpilot, etc. but they aren't links. When I do find a review, it goes right to UltraVPN. And while UltraVPN seems to get some "ok to good" reviews, I wonder about the independence of the reviews. For example, this Techopedia review has a sectioned titled, "UltraVPN vs. Top VPN Competitors". And yet, where's NordVPN or SurfShark? And I found no less than 8 links to download and try UltraVPN. BUT, to be fair, let's not pre-judge something we have not seen yet. It might be a great suite of programs. No doubt, there will soon been real reviews by sites we trust.
Exactly, it all seems so odd to me. I haven't followed all of this thread, but why not simply give people refunds and tell them to switch to another well known AV, many of them are even free. Why on earth would I switch from Kaspersky to Pango UltraAV, it feels like playing a game of Russian Roulette.
That was exactly my point, switching to some unknown AV named Pango UltraAV, is probably also not a good idea.
If they are banned I have to wonder if they would also be banned from making the financial transactions required to do so. Not that I assume they want to pay anyone.
This Aura AV looks like it may be what is now named UltraAV: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/aura For brief desript of Aura's relationship to Pango and UltraAV read this: https://www.reddit.com/r/antivirus/...=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I am sure that would be prohibitively expensive to give a million users refunds. That revenue most likely has already be spent, invested in malware research, malware definition/signature files, or other wise tied up. No, I think migrating everyone to a different company/solution is the right thing to do - if done seamlessly so users don't spend even a second unprotected. This will give those users time to evaluate their options, decide if they want to keep UltraAV or not. And if not, it will give them time to research alternatives. I just wish they didn't pick an unknown company/solution to shove users unto. Now to counter my own argument, I will note, IF PROPERLY DONE, had (if?) Kaspersky did/does it right, they could just execute a program uninstall routine. And again, IF PROPERLY DONE, that routine would unregister Kaspersky from the Windows Security Center and that would automatically re-enable Microsoft Defender thus ensuring users don't go even a second unprotected. But there's no money in that for Kaspersky. So, as I noted previously, no doubt UltraAV is paying Kaspersky some undisclosed amount to assume those accounts. And as noted previously, nothing wrong with that either AS LONG AS customers are getting an equal or better quality product for their money. And that, IMO, is the big unknown.
WARNING!!! UltraAV will surreptitiously install on your PC without asking for permission EVEN IF YOU HAVE UNINSTALLED KASPERSKY !!! As I wrote in my message quoted above, I believed that UlraAV would automatically install through perhaps a Kaspersky update or by some other Kaspersky related application. I had decided that I did not want to try UltraAV or even have it installed on my PC. So last week I uninstalled KIS and all other Kaspersky products, e.g., password manager, VPN. I also installed a 30-day trial of Bitdefender. I mistakenly believed that this would prevent UltraAv from being installed on my PC. Tonight after stepping away from my PC for a few hours when I returned I was greeted with a large white square message superimposed on my desktop telling me to register my UlatraAV account! WHAT ?? I then went to my program list to discover that both Ultra VPN and UltraAV had been installed on my system without my permission while I was away from my PC.
Wow! That is disturbing. I want to assume, but I hate assuming as it so often comes around to kick me in the ***. So I have to ask - did you reboot after uninstalling KIS? Assuming rolleyes you did, this might be a case where running a decent Registry cleaner, like the one in CCleaner (the only one I would suggest) might have prevented such an event as [hopefully], it would detect the uninstalled program and then find and tag the orphaned registry entries associated with it, alerting users to their presence so they could delete them. At the very least your warning should be taken as a warning for KIS users (who don't want these Ultra products) to reboot, then search for KIS related Startup entries and Services that might be running in order to kill them too. Were you able to totally disable and remove the Ultra apps?
