US Kaspersky customers startled by forced switch to 'rando' AV software

With the US ban of Kaspersky security software, customers were supposed to be informed that they would automatically be migrated to a different antivirus product. If so, some of them clearly didn't get the memo.

In a series of social media posts spotted by TechCrunch, several Kaspersky users said they were unaware that this migration was going to happen, especially as it ran automatically on their own PCs and devices. That experience has left a bad impression on the startled customers, some of whom have been trying to get rid of the replacement UltraAV software.

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"I was using Kaspersky, didn't realize they'd be shuffling us off to some rando AV in September. Nearly had a heart attack when I started my pc today and found a program I didn't download," complained one person on Reddit.

"Woke up to Kasperky completely gone from my system with Ultra AV and Ultra VPN freshly installed (not by me, just automatically while I slept)," said another. "No sign of Kaspersky anywhere on my system and Ultra AV's settings are non-existent."

Other disgruntled customers have been chiming in on Kaspersky's own support forum.

"This morning I turned on my PC. Never had an issue with KAV [Kaspersky Antivirus]. I know US gov't cancelled KAV--not happy. Well this unknown company and its software UltraAV automatically installed on my computer. I was never asked nor notified that this installation would happen," commented one person on the forum.

"UltraAV automatically installing itself on my PC freaked me out," said another. "It still required me to login with my Kaspersky password/account, but no thanks. I have no idea who Pango is, and there is literally no information about their antivirus/credibility."

The need to move US Kaspersky customers to a different product started in the wake of a ban by the Biden administration on virtually all Kaspersky security products, prohibiting the Russia-based company from selling any of its core products in the country.

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The ban followed an investigation by the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry (BIS), which found the company and its products a security risk. As justification for the ban, the BIS cited "unacceptable risks to the United States' national security and the security and safety of its people."

In early September, Kaspersky revealed that it would automatically migrate customers to Pango Group's UltraAV software as a continuation of their current subscriptions. Updates to Kaspersky were due to stop on September 29, so the move to UltraAV needed to occur before the end of the month.

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Pango spokesperson Sydney Harwood told ZDNET that all Kaspersky US customers with a valid email address associated with their accounts received email communication detailing the transition process.

"There were also notifications and details of the transition in-app, in your MyKaspersky account pages and on Kaspersky Labs' web pages," Hardwood added. "All Kaspersky notifications directed customers to ultrasecureav.com for more information about the transition. It is possible that some customers did not log into their account and see the alert in-app prior to the transition, and if the user did not have a valid email address associated with their Kaspersky account, they would not have received the email communication."

The notification email alerted recipients that they would get UltraAV with their existing paid subscriptions and promised that they'd receive further instructions on how to activate their accounts.

But email can be an unreliable form of communication. Messages get lost or ignored. Others are blocked or filtered as spam. People read them and forget them. There are many reasons why some customers may not have received or read the messages.

The question then is who's to blame for the disgruntled customers: Kaspersky for not following through on the alerts? Pango for not making the transition more seamless? Or the customers themselves for not paying attention to the alerts they did receive?

And what if a Kaspersky customer didn't want UltraAV? Was there a way for them to opt out so they wouldn't be automatically switched over? Harwood told ZDNET that users could opt out of UltraAV and work with the customer service team to cancel their account if they did not want to move forward with the service.

"Following the communication from Kaspersky, customers had the ability to cancel their accounts directly with Kaspersky customer service and therefore, would not be switched over," Harwood explained.

Still, it sounds like the whole transition could have been handled better. At the very least, people should have been given an opportunity to refuse the new software, even if they had already been alerted or failed to opt out.

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"I'm annoyed at Kaspersky," Avi Fleischer, a customer of Kaspersky, told TechCrunch. "Basically, on my computers, Kaspersky pushed an uninstall of the Kaspersky products and pushed an automatic install of UltraAV & UltraVPN onto my computers. They should've given me the option to accept UltraAV or not. They should NEVER push software onto someone's computer without explicit permission."