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Kaspersky Launches Its Free Antivirus Software Worldwide (engadget.com)
Kaspersky has finally launched its free antivirus software after a year-and-a-half of testing it in select regions. From a report: While the software was only available in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, China and in Nordic countries during its trial run, Kaspersky is releasing it worldwide. The free antivirus doesn't have VPN, Parental Controls and Online Payment Protection its paid counterpart offers, but it has all the essential features you need to protect your PC. It can scan files and emails, protect your PC while you use the web and quarantine malware that infects your system. The company says the software isn't riddled with advertisements like other free antivirus offerings. Instead of trying to make ad money off your patronage, Kaspersky will use the data you contribute to improve machine learning across its products. The free antivirus will be available in the US, Canada and most Asia-Pacific countries over the next couple of days, if it isn't yet. After this initial release, the company will roll it out in other regions from September to November.
Who better to write antivirus software than an entity accused of cyberespionage?
Antivirus built-in to Windows, brought to you by the people that make the highly-infectable Windows!
In all seriousness, the biggest logical fault I have with using Microsoft's antivirus tool is that being both the source of the problem and the solution to the problem doesn't make a lot of sense. Without knowing Microsoft's priorities it's difficult to really say how independent their antivirus team is relative to their mainstream products teams, so for all we know they're subject to the same pressures to produce code regardless of quality that the main products teams face. Even if they are independent to an extent, we don't know how corporate culture impacts them such that their mentality might be similar.
Using a third-party product as essentially an audit is probably the right approach, if that third-party product can be trusted. Unfortunately over the years we've seen both paid products and free products devolve to where they should lose our trust. You can't permanently rely on a solution and have to always be ready to change if your previous choice becomes unsuitable.
With that in mind, Kaspersky may have some stuff going for it, but it has some stuff going against it too. Yevgeny Kaspersky seems to be at the top of the game when it comes to security, but since he continues to reside in his home country where there's a history of questionable actions and takeovers by the government that has also been suggested as a state-sponsor of cyberespionage, it's difficult to trust that there won't be government meddling in Kaspersky products or an outright takeover of the the company by the State should the State feel that it's in its best interests to do so. This isn't some random application, this is software that must establish deep integration into the OS to function and also must regularly communicate with company servers to retrieve new information and to update itself. We should be skeptical as to how much we trust any application that requires these kinds of privileges, and the source of the application is important.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I'm currently using BitDefender Free, quite happy with it, lightweight, silent, (...)
So I gather you're a Windows prod...erm, user. Why the fuck a Windows user has to do with Slashdot?
Oh, i understand your confusion, i'm just in Slashdot waiting for the "Year of Linux desktop" article to pop up.