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Best Buy Stops Selling Kaspersky Security Software (startribune.com)
swschrad writes: Call it a stampede, call it a business decision, but Best Buy has pulled Kaspersky internet security software from its shelves and website. Some in the U.S. government suspect Russian ties make it a suspicious product. Since all major security companies have links with each other and with government security agencies, sharing threat evidence to find counters, Kaspersky's defense seems valid. But if you want it, be prepared to buy it off their own website. Best Buy will give Kaspersky software purchasers 45 days to exchange it for free for another product if they want. Additionally, customers can also uninstall it themselves or have a Geek Squad agent do it for free within that time window.
Today Walmart pulled all bottles of Russian dressing from their shelves.
So what happened to the free market? Does Best Buy have a good reason for thinking they know better than their customers? What's next? Linux gets a ban in the US?
If you rely on ANY antivirus software then you have already lost. I'm surprised people even still run that shit. Has it even been shown that AV software does anything whatsoever? I've never seen one detect an infection. Usually I'm cleaning off infections from multiple sources that the AV completely failed to detect.
Generally all AV software does is load your system down making it slower and less responsive while not actually protecting you from anything other than exploits from 10 years ago and often not even them.
or, rather, a full blown scam.
the exploits that the US SPOOKS want to keep, they keep and they tell the antivir companies NOT to report on.
that makes all of them - 100% of them - completely untrustworthy. afterall, if their virus check lets to so-called good guys' malware thru, what if you don't think the good guys ARE good guys? and today, a lot of us don't think our own good guys are all that, well, 'good'.
how much could the russians fuck me over? personally - me? not very much. chinese? not very much. US? a whole fucking lot!
I have more to fear from my own so-called good guys than I ever will have to worry about from the foreign 'bad guys'.
this black and white view has to stop. people need to learn that there are many grey levels and giving 100% trust to anyone is a mistake, in today's world.
since the whole antivir space is highly political, I choose not to buy any of their products. if my system gets fucked, I'll reinstall. but then again, I rarely use windows anymore and almost never do I do anything on a public network with windows.
its sad that the US vendors are buying this BS story about one antivir company being 'good' and the other being 'bad'. then again, I bet the decision is made for them, if you get my drift. yet another reason our good guys aren't quite so good anymore.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
... is this the same Best Buy who is best buds with the FBI and whose "Geek Squad" warrantlessly scans every hard drive they touch looking for kiddie porn, warez, etc. and gets paid commission for what they find?
I strongly doubt they have their customer's security interests in mind.
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
Hah, serves Putin right! How dare they covet our precious salads.
You have the right conclusion—there is a scam going on—but the wrong cause.
Programs aren't trustworthy or untrustworthy because of who wrote them. They're trustworthy or not trustworthy because they respect a user's software freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify. Computers don't evaluate the nationality of the people who entered the source code or developed the algorithms, computers execute the instructions they're instructed to execute. The catch is whether those instructions are available to be run, inspected, modified, and shared by the computer's owner (respecting a user's software freedom) or not. Software freedom lets us work together to make sure the programs we run are reliable, safe, robust, and do what we want them to do (even if that means evaluating source code ourselves or taking source code to someone to do trusted evaluations on our behalf for a fee).
No one person can inspect all the free software out there, there's too much. But collectively we can look out for ourselves. This is also no guarantee against bugs; there is no such guarantee as all large programs have bugs. This is as close as we can come to making sure the computers we trust obey our instructions (and those of 3rd parties because we've first given the OK).
There's no defensible argument that concludes Microsoft's, Norton's, or McAfee's anti-malware software (to name a few examples) are trustworthy but Kaspersky's anti-malware is not trustworthy. All of those programs are proprietary (user-subjugating and nonfree), so you're right: they're all untrustworthy.
All proprietary software regardless of ostensible purpose is untrustworthy. Proprietary OSes being "defended" with proprietary anti-malware software is using one black box to guard another black box from inscrutable weaknesses. The fix is software freedom: run a free software OS, use and support (financially as well as in conversations) free software anti-malware software, and (since the public clearly has plenty of money to spend on these programs) pay for programmers to develop and maintain free software anti-malware programs and free software OSes. Since modern societies rely on computers more and more, this is also another opportunity for us to develop cross-platform, free software, anti-malware software funded with taxpayer money. We know what the proprietors offer: secrecy and untrustworthiness. I think we can do better and respect our software freedom while simultaneously offering living-wage paying jobs for long-term development and maintenance.
Digital Citizen
Why does america hate capitalism?
By not selling Kaspersky I feel much better now!
At that point, the only way the government can come out of it clean is to either reveal the basis for their conclusions (which to the best of my knowledge, they do not want to do), or else go on the record as stating that it is in their opinion only.
If Kapersky wins the lawsuit, then the US government could be compelled to officially retract all relevant libelous statements, and may (?) even create a precedent for Kapersky to be able to sue them for lost income.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Do people still actually buy software at the store in a box as opposed to downloading it?
How retro.
There are far better vodkas than the Russian stuff.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Anything linked to Russians must be evil.
Everyone knows China track record of cyber espionage is far more extensive than that of Russia. Remember how we lost those F35 blueprints.
So guess we are going to boycott Apple too?
By the way Apple really deserves a boycott for withholding a 250 US$ from taxation by keeping their profit outside the US exploiting internal transfer pricing between its companies.
Software is still sold in boxes on shelves? Like actually? Does it come with a CD / DVD? That leads me to a follow up questions: Do people still have working CD/DVD drives in their computers?
Virtualization adds bloat, but the bloat is minimal, and so are the bugs. Virtualization of one or two machines is relatively useless. However, virtualization of a fleet of servers, allowing installed software to be isolated in separate environments, but housed on a much smaller set of hardware, combined with High Availability features to ensure the VMs never go down, buys a significant amount of reliability in infrastructure.
McAfee is good enough for a racket. It comes in a nice looking box.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Lies! All lies!
At least if you ask a Pole or a Finn.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What is this Best Buy and why is it considered a story when they sell or don't sell something?
Is there really someone left who buys software offline?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Streisand effect at its fullest potential. God, this is far better effect than the solar eclipse a few weeks back.
I will hand my computer directly to the Russian Mafia before I let a Geek Squadder anywhere near it.