this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 82 points 1 year ago (11 children)

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
[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

This is Lemmy. Chances of people here not using Windows is relatively high.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Telegram is better than WhatsApp. At least it has a decent Linux client, and all clients are open source. WhatsApp has neither.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Unless you're constantly using secret chats all your data is stored in plain text... This is actually worse than WhatsApp

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

This is nonsense. The Founders of Telegram are exiles from Russia.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly, Zoom just has a hilariously high frequency of vulnerabilities being discovered.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd say avoid AVG too then since it's basically Avast.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does Escape from Tarkov make the list?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s news worthy enough for a technology sublemmy, I’d think.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why would anyone trust, want to use, and yet alone pay for Russian antivirus software

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (5 children)

What if said software is being used to manipulate national interests from a civilian level and its owned by an adverserial nation?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (11 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can't wait for the EU to ban Facebook :(

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago
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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago

Why would anybody in their right mind use Kasper by now.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

Only pure all-American spyware on my machine. 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🦅

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

😂😂😂.

American software is created by Jesus Christ.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

We gonna have to worry about 7zip?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Wow the comments and upvotes/downvotes here are stupid.

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