Kaspersky has faced controversy over allegations that it has engaged with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB)—ties which the company has actively denied. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security banned Kaspersky products from all government departments on September 13, 2017. In October 2017, subsequent reports alleged that hackers working for the Russian government stole confidential data from the home computer of an American National Security Agency contractor via Kaspersky antivirus software. Kaspersky denied the allegations, reporting that the software had detected Equation Group malware samples which it uploaded to its servers for analysis in its normal course of operation.[13] The company has since announced commitments to increased accountability, such as soliciting independent reviews and verification of its software’s source code, and announcing that it would migrate some of its core infrastructure for foreign customers from Russia to Switzerland. In November 2020, Kaspersky finished relocating the data of its customers from Russia to Switzerland.[14][15] The company has also opened multiple transparency centers in Switzerland, Brazil, Canada, Spain and Malaysia which allow state agencies, government experts and regulators to review its source code.[16][17]

That’s not a source. By that metric every American AV has an NSA backdoor. And, ok, both of these are probably true tbh. But Kaspersky publishes extremely good security research and analysis which is just technical and totally possible to verify independently, so there’s no reason to avoid those, even if you don’t want to use their software.

I was curious whether some scandal about data being sent to russian govt had emerged after the war, but apparently things are as they used to be.

Mind you, AVs have a scary control over your system, and I totally respect not wanting to use one headquartered in Russia (and since the government security agencies have ties within those companies even in the “free world” (lmao) it’s safe to assume Russian govt has them inside Kaspersky too).

With that being said, kaspersky is actually a multinational corporation present in many areas of the world, I wonder how much influence Moscow actuallt has over them.