Updated on: September 30, 2024
Kaspersky subscribers living in the US woke up to find that their antivirus was completely replaced by UltraAV, a relatively unknown antivirus. The VPN was also replaced with UltraAV’s VPN.
After Kaspersky products became banned in the US, it shut down its US operations and laid off its employees. Overnight Kaspersky deleted and replaced itself with UltraAV, causing many to wonder if they’d been infected by malware.
There are already reports of people being unable to install it from their computers using uninstaller tools. Many have flocked to forums like Reddit to express their frustration with Kaspersky.
However, what actually happened isn’t as insidious as many users believe. Users were sent an email in early September stating they would continue receiving protection from UltraAV using their Kaspersky subscription.
In response to the confusion, Kaspersky made an official statement to explain its decisions.
“Kaspersky has additionally partnered with UltraAV to make the transition to their product as seamless as possible, which is why on 9/19, U.S. Kaspersky antivirus customers received a software update facilitating the transition to UltraAV,” it added.
“This update ensured that users would not experience a gap in protection upon Kaspersky’s exit from the market.”
Kaspersky also stated that they sent every customer with a verified account an email about the transition. In addition, every time someone opened Kaspersky before 9/19, a pop-up would inform them about the upcoming changes.
Despite Kaspersky informing people, there was a lot of initial confusion about the change over the automatic installation. The panic ultimately boils down to Kaspersky not adequately informing customers about the automatic installation process. This also hasn’t solved the concerns about UltraAV’s effectiveness.
“UltraAV has no history of being a good, effective, of well-known brand like KAV was. So id bail,” writes a Reddit user.
Kaspersky users are faced with a choice, they can either continue using UltraAV or find another antivirus.