Kaspersky users have now been migrated to UltraAV—folks are rightfully complaining
Kaspersky has agreed to transfer 1 million of its users to Pango's UltraAV
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Key notes
- Kaspersky users in the US discovered their antivirus replaced by UltraAV without notice.
- Users report missing settings and file deletions, causing frustration.
- This change follows the Biden administration’s ban on Kaspersky over security concerns.
Kaspersky users in the US are waking up today to an oddly weird sight on their PCs/laptops: the antivirus has seemingly uninstalled itself and replaced with UltraAV without user consent.
Folks online are now reporting that they received no communication whatsoever about the change. Some even go as far as calling its replacement, Pango Group-owned UltraAV, to be problematic for deleting files without permission and lacking useful settings.
“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). No sign of Kaspersky anywhere on my system and Ultra AV’s settings are non-existent,” one Redditor says.
Other users on the Kaspersky forum also chime in similar frustrations, with some suspecting it’s related to Kaspersky’s transition due to US government restrictions. The Biden administration has previously banned the antivirus for national security reasons, with the transition happening at least for some weeks prior.
Update (September 23): In response to this story, however, a Pango spokesperson told us that Kaspersky had communicated directly with users about the change, which had a high engagement rate. If you’ve been affected by this issue, you can contact UltraAV’s support team via chat or email.
Kaspersky is a well-known Russian cybersecurity company, and the US banned the product out of fear that Russian intelligence could use it to conduct cyber espionage or sabotage critical infrastructure. The previous administration under Donald Trump also banned Kaspersky from operating in the US.
“UltraAV is not validated by any independent tests, so I would uninstall it and replace it with Bitdefender or ESET,” another user complains, saying that they’ve replaced Pango’s product with other alternatives.
An exclusive report by Axios earlier this month revealed that Pango and Kaspersky had reached a deal to transfer 1 million users to UltraAV amid the ban, which has been effective since July 20.
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