Kaspersky is just one piece of software to avoid. Others include:
- Telegram
- Avast AV
- Anything from 360 Safe / Qihoo 360
- Opera browser … now owned by above
- Zoom
- FileZilla / UTorrent / other PUA that bundles adware and acts essentially as a trojan
Add in:
- TikTok
- Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Threads
- Reddit :)
For antivirus, Microsoft’s built-in one is fine. Ideally use an OS that has better security and lower default permissions like popular Linux distros (at the very least, it’s a smaller target than Windows). I haven’t checked recently, but using Malware Bytes for occasional runs (not as active protection though) was good and is probably still good.
But in general, use FOSS, at the very least they’ll probably not pull a Reddit and screw over their users.
Seriously. Windows Defender is an excellent piece of software, and its all you need. Paying for anything else is kinda foolish.
If you’re on windows, you dont need anything else except maybe to install malware bytes once a month, run the scan, and uninstall it.
This is Lemmy. Chances of people here not using Windows is relatively high.
You know what they say about assuming things.
I would say that the fact that I used the word ‘chances’ would suggest I wasn’t assuming anything.
I would also suggest that the very large Linux communities would support my non-assumption.
Oh, so its like a card game
“I say Chance! and nullify your Astral Assumption card!”
No? It’s like a guess. You’ve heard of guesses before, right?
Yeah, always make assumptions. They make conversations faster.
This just feels like a random hit list; how did you come up with it?
Why zoom? It’s based out of San Francisco.
I also object to the Telegram inclusion. Unless you want to include Discord, and various other server side encrypted communication apps. The founders may be Russians by birth but they have Ukrainian roots, are no longer Russian citizens, had their first company stolen from them by the Kremlin, etc. Also I always like to note, Einstein was a German by birth but he was no Nazi.
What’s the FileZilla connection? Tim Kosse (which as far as I can tell it’s still the primary author) is a German.
Honestly, Zoom just has a hilariously high frequency of vulnerabilities being discovered.
I mean… That’s fair, I don’t recommend zoom, but those reasons have nothing to do with Russia and everything to do with a company that was willing to lie that they had E2EE and didn’t.
This very partial list is based on my being in cyber security for 20 years and working a variety of incidents involving these apps. You all can do whatever you want with your computers.
That you didn’t give a helpful answer makes me doubt you where as before I was interested in what you had to say.
Telegram is better than WhatsApp. At least it has a decent Linux client, and all clients are open source. WhatsApp has neither.
Unless you’re constantly using secret chats all your data is stored in plain text… This is actually worse than WhatsApp
Maybe better client and more features. But Russians have full access to servers and messages. They could read whatever they want. It’s a fact that proved during war that Russia started in Ukraine.
This is nonsense. The Founders of Telegram are exiles from Russia.
You got an answer why it’s not.
Ah fuck, what’s the alternative to FileZilla?! I’ve been using that for like 17 years.
So just to illustrate, I went to the normal FileZilla download page and downloaded the Win64 package. Then I submitted it to VirusTotal.
https://filezilla-project.org/download.php?platform=win64#close
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/dbde8a4bd71bb1fbc0511cdb657dfeffdaedc513aa425f856043532a7cba6fce
If you click other versions, there are installers without the adware.
Those dumbasses have been doing this for years. I don’t know if it has viruses and such in it but it has had the bundled stuff for a while now.
I wish it didn’t since it’s a great program.
filezilla has an opencandy installer
As someone who has used FileZilla for years, I am shook and I appreciate you pasting the link
Dolphin on KDE/Linux and WinSCP on Windows
I think whatever GNOME calls their file browser supports FTP as well.
It surely does, but i’m not sure if you can switch to side-by-side view
Then use the kde file browse.
Winscp?
Cyberduck
Same here.
CrossFTP seems promising. Also has the multi OS support.
I’d say avoid AVG too then since it’s basically Avast.
I don’t even use antivirus software anymore. Previously, every time I found a new one recommended by security experts I thought I could trust, about a year later, it turned to shit or was relieved to always having been shit. Now I just backup my stuff and vet any executable. I don’t do any serious work on my Windows install anyway, so nuking it isn’t a problem.
Out of curiosity, why Telegram? (Im out of the loop on this one)
As for uTorrent, I’ve got version 2.2.1 and have never allowed it to update in the last decade or however long it’s been. I think that was the last version that didn’t allow any ads or otherwise and was simply a solid p2p client at the time.
Because it’s less (because of history stored on server and use of OTR being problematic) secure than ICQ in year 2003, prone to phishing and, yes, made by people I wouldn’t trust.
may I ask why didn’t you just switch to qbittorrent? is there a feature that utorrent has but qbit doesn’t?
Never needed to or even thought about it. uTorrent never gave me any issues and was super lightweight. Additionally, there was a fansubbed anime site I was a member of for a long time that had a limited whitelist of p2p clients last they would allow their trackers to function on. uT 2.2.1 was one of those.
That pc seldom gets used anymore nowadays anyway, as my main pc is running OpenSuse and ktorrent does all I need it to.
Because Russians started it I guess?
If you forget everything else, it’s basically an unencrypted chat where the company behind it can read all your messages.
Like discord?
I never cared about discord so I don’t know, but I’d assume so, yes.
Does Escape from Tarkov make the list?
Just don’t use it for secure comms and anything tangentially connected for what you consider “secure” matters. Simple as.
Telegram ftw. Down with WhatsApp.
Signal has better defaults and a less compromised origin
Nobody I know is using it so the point is almost moot :(
There’s nothing really wrong with telegram.
It’s just social media for people who aren’t indoctrinated by the west.
Country in a trade war / cold war with another country decides to block imports of some product from said other country, citing fears of the product being poisoned. It’s barely news.
It’s news worthy enough for a technology sublemmy, I’d think.
Yeah it is, and I’m happy about it being posted, it’s not that. I should be less sarcastic and more direct, I am just getting jaded. Thanks for pointing it out.
I guess what I am saying is more that of course the US is going to try to limit Russian influence and trade, just as Russia does as much as it can. Same with China and Tiktok and whatever.
It’s reasonable, it’s actually one of the more reasonable things the US does. There are a ton of people around here who cosplay as communists while rooting for fascist Putin who try to blow these things up as an attack on free trade or freedom of speech.
It’s not like Putin’s people literally wrote and published a book about how they want to do election interference using stuff like this.
Cool cool, agreed.
It’s news. That’s all that matters.
Also this is actually a pretty unique and interesting scenario. You ever seen a digital embargo of software from a single country imposed on citizens? Not to mention the dignity and rights violations on both sides…
Yes, I’ve seen digital embargoes preventing companies in other countries doing business in mine, because their legal environment differs from ours.
Google Analytics got banned in several European countries comes to mind. I remember some small blogs writing about that, not much else.
I mean, regardless of semantics about whether it’s new to us or not, that’s still news.
Why would anybody in their right mind use Kasper by now.
Why would anyone trust, want to use, and yet alone pay for Russian antivirus software
I’m not sure how that’s relevant. People should be free to use whatever they want. I’m not interested in Russian software, but that doesn’t mean banning it is okay. The same goes for Chinese software like TikTok (not touching that), Iranian software, or North Korean software, if that’s even a thing. I don’t care if literal Nazis made the software, people should be free to use what they want.
The only areas the government should get involved are:
- government owned devices
- public advisories
- prosecution of crimes where the software is involved
The software I choose to use is not the government’s business. If I violate a law, charge me with a crime, but don’t preemptively ban stuff.
What if said software is being used to manipulate national interests from a civilian level and its owned by an adverserial nation?
Can’t wait for the EU to ban Facebook :(
I mean, yeah? I’m down!
deleted by creator
That’s one of the costs of liberty. The government will need to find another way.
The barrier to banning something in the interests of national security must be much higher than “this could be used by our enemies.” That’s the entire basis for the War on a Terror, the Patriot Act, and the NSA spying on Americans, and I won’t stand for it. It’s also the same idea as banning books, that’s just not how a free society works.
You combat misinformation through integrity and transparency, not bans.
That’s one of the costs of liberty. The government will need to find another way.
No, that’s not liberty. If the average user would have any way of detecting when software is doing nefarious thighs, then sure, you’d be right, but the average user can’t possibly know that software is misbehaving just like they couldn’t have possibly known that asbestos or lead was bad for them. Software is opaque. As long as it remains opaque, consumers are unsuspecting victims and need help.
average user can’t possibly know
Hence the information campaign to make people aware.
Look at cigarettes, they are harmful and therefore have a strong information campaign to inform the public. I highly doubt you’ll find anyone today who isn’t aware of the dangers of smoking, but just 100 years ago, it was considered classy and largely innocuous. The difference was a big information campaign to counter the tobacco lobby’s attempts to spin smoking as somehow healthy.
The government’s role should be to make opaque things transparent, not to bad things that could be harmful. At the same time, they can spy on other countries to get an idea of what types of control they can exert, which would help them better inform the public.
But at the end of the day, it’s up to the individual what they choose to believe. Liberty is having the freedom to make poor choices, and to live with the consequences. The government’s role should be to earn our trust, but they violate it at every opportunity in the name of “security” (NSA, TSA, etc). Yes, a lot of people will ignore it, and that’s a part of having liberty.
Hence the information campaign to make people aware.
There are still those who think the lunar landing didn’t happen so this is not a valid option for something that might pose an immediate danger to society.
But at the end of the day, it’s up to the individual what they choose to believe. Liberty is having the freedom to make poor choices, and to live with the consequences.
Government backed malicious software is not just dangerous to the user, it’s a societal level threat. And unlike smoking, which is banned wherever it poses a danger to more than just the smoker, there isn’t a way to restrict usage in a way in which it only affects the user.
immediate danger to society
But what exactly is the definition of that?
For example, which of these meet that definition:
- an antivirus that ignores viruses from the county of origin
- a social media app that collects data from a device and sends it home
- a social media app that likely promotes content with a specific political agenda the government doesn’t like
- an app that hides monetary transaction details, which is commonly used by terrorists and other criminals
- a social media app that doesn’t id users and allows criminals to use it to communicate
The first two are probably the initial targets, but a law enforcement agency could make a decent case for the rest. Where does it stop?
That’s why I think we need a hard limit on government authority here. It’s better for some bad stuff to propagate than for the scope of what’s blocked to expand and effectively limit freedoms of speech, association, press, etc.
Government have a lot of tools at their disposal, I honestly don’t think banning software needs to be one of them.
The cost of liberty and freedom is eternal vigilance from those who want to harm us, and those who claim to protect us.
Side tangent, but your oopsie of Nefarious Things to “Nefarious Thighs” fucking FLOORED me xD Wish I could detect nefarious thighs!
Hah! I’m not changing it
Sounds like a George Michael song to go along with Careless Whisper.
Banning software is not the same as banning books, lol. Books are passive ideas, software is active and can be used for espionage. You’re creating a false equivalence here.
They’re absolutely in the same category.
If the government can ban things in the name of “national security” based on little more than “it’s potentially dangerous,” what’s stopping them from labeling any platform that doesn’t censor information the way they want as “dangerous” and subject to bans?
The government doesn’t get to choose what I run on my computers, nor do they get to choose what books I read, what movies I watch, etc.
Oh yeah, the fallacious slippery slope again. How creative and intellectual!
If there’s anything it applies to, it’s government overreach. Look at how the TSA expanded its violation of personal privacy in the name of “security,” or how the NSA and FBI have expanded surveillance of individuals. Look at the militarization of police.
Once you let the government ban a handful of apps, it’s going to use that new power more frequently. That’s what bureaucrats do, when you give them a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
There are so many examples of government getting its foot in the door and steadily expanding its control. That’s what it does.
I’d still use it if my friends and most of the people I know do
You do just as you did. Tell people and let them make up their minds. Posts like yours convinced me in the past and it will others in the future .
Because it’s a good antivirus
Good luck
You found one video supporting your viewpoint. Kaspersky’s role in Russian intelligence has been an open secret since the mid 2010s. This is Facebook Anti-Vaxxer “research” methodology.
The guy ho made the video works as data analyst, plus Kaspersky works perfectly as antivirus. Can you gave me evidence supporting your claim?
Not that it was a secret at any point. That company has that approach to advertising and PR reminiscent of hacker movies as normies, lamers and “Windows power users” perceive them. Usually when there’s bullshit in one part, you expect it to be there in other parts too.
But - their “antivirus check tool” or something was very convenient for me to remove winlockers somewhere in 2007. I do remember the good things.
Kaspersky was actually good a long time ago, but there was a shakeup and the FSB started to get more involved in their operations somehow. Its not safe now, is what i’m saying.
Only pure all-American spyware on my machine. 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🦅
You’d think the fact that Kaspersky is useless would be enough to keep people from using it.
You would think that but I have a Friend that bought the paid version and swears by it, he had more than enough problems with it blocking everything it wants, I don’t say anything anymore I just shake my head and move on.
It’s not useless for brainless users sadly
We gonna have to worry about 7zip?
Will this affect websites, too? Cs.rin.ru is a good resource for a certain type of thing.
FBI on its way to arrest me because I used MPC-BE to play dolby digital content without a license for the ac3 codec like 10 years ago lol
They can pry MPC-BE from my warm cheeze curl stained hands! I’ve been using it to play 4K BluRays on an HTPC, and to decode all these new proprietary surround sound codecs so I don’t need to buy a new expensive ass AVR.
Russia has computers???
Wow the comments and upvotes/downvotes here are stupid.
If American really cared about security, they would use free software.
If anyone cared about security, they would use free software.
😂😂😂.
American software is created by Jesus Christ.
American software is created by some dude in Nebraska maintaining libg++ at no financial gain to him.
Damn immigrant
