Kaspersky Antivirus Review

Company Background: Security Concerns?

Let’s address the elephant in the room: Why is Kaspersky so controversial? Let’s start from the very beginning.

Kaspersky started as AVP in the early 1990s in Moscow, and since its early years, it has shown strokes of genius. For instance, in 1998, a highly-destructive virus called CIH was released into the wild. In its first three weeks, AVP was the only software able to remove this virus.

Later, AVP was renamed Kaspersky after one of its original creators, Eugene Kaspersky. While the name changed, the software continued to improve. It became the first antivirus software to quarantine potentially malicious files and observe them in isolation, a practice that has become common in antivirus software today.

In recent years, however, disturbing allegations about Kaspersky’s supposed ties to the Russian government emerged due to the fact that it was founded in Russia and that it has uncovered hacking plots run by governments. In 2012, for example, Kaspersky Labs uncovered a supposed attempt of the U.S. government to hack into and spy on Russian government networks.

As tensions between the U.S. and Russia rose, Kaspersky faced backlash not just from the U.S. government but other world leaders. Unfortunately, the allegations made against Kaspersky were not entirely baseless.

Kaspersky’s Alleged Russian Ties

Rumors about Kaspersky started spreading back in 2012 when Bloomberg pointed out a pattern of new hires with connections to the Russian military establishment.1 In 2017, the U.S Department of Homeland Security banned the use of Kaspersky software by any federal agency, and Britain followed suit shortly after.2 Twitter has banned Kaspersky Lab from advertising on the site, and Best Buy even stopped selling the company’s products.3 And the U.S argues that Kaspersky hacked into an NSA contractor’s laptop through its software back in 2015.4

Kaspersky has denied ties with the Russian government and claimed that the bans are the result of U.S-Russia tensions. While that point is hard to prove, we found it reassuring that starting in 2018, Kaspersky started moving its data centers holding non-Russian data from Russia to Switzerland. It finished the relocation in 2020.

Exposure of User’s Browsing Data

The allegations against Kaspersky are not all political. Some arose because of technical and product concerns.

In 2019, journalists pointed out that the way Kaspersky protects users online, by injecting a snippet of code into URLs, could allow other companies to track a computer’s browser traffic for advertising purposes.5 We don’t think this is a reason to shy away from Kaspersky, though—advertisers work hard to find our data wherever they can. And more importantly, Kaspersky updated its code so that individual computers can’t be tracked. If it still makes you nervous, you can adjust your settings to opt out of the code insertion.

More Allegations About Kaspersky’s Russian Ties

In April 2022, The German Federal Office for Information Security, known as BSI, urged the public to avoid using Kaspersky due to its ties to the Russian government. The BSI alleges that the firm could be implicated in hacking incidents related to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Around the same time, the United States Federal Communications Commission blacklisted Kaspersky from buying services, parts, and components from U.S. companies. The use of Kaspersky products, however, remains legal in the United States except on government computers.

Kaspersky responded with a statement reiterating its commitment to maintain the integrity and trustworthiness of its products. Kaspersky also reassured that data from non-Russian clients are sent to its Switzerland servers, a move the company made in 2018 after the first series of allegations about its ties to the Russian government.

What Malware Did Kaspersky Find?

Setting aside those allegations and concerns, the Kaspersky antivirus software itself has a strong reputation for being reliable at detecting potential threats. After all, with all the allegations about the company, Kaspersky wouldn’t have lasted as long as it has if it’s not good at doing its job.

Filled with curiosity, we signed up for a Kaspersky subscription to test exactly what makes Kaspersky a popular choice. We wanted to see for ourselves if Kaspersky is a great antivirus option, focusing on areas most important to users such as ease of use, privacy, cost, customer support, and threat detection ability.

Right off the bat, we learned that Kaspersky protects against a wide range of threat types. Primarily, it detects and removes malware including viruses, spyware, adware, ransomware, keyloggers, remote access trojans, and zero-day attacks.

Kaspersky also has a Web Anti-Virus feature that monitors web traffic to stop attempts to visit phishing websites or download malicious files. In 2021, this feature alone blocked nearly 65 million unique malicious objects from entering devices.6

Our primary focus is Kaspersky’s ability to detect malware and threats existing on local devices. So we purchased the cheapest subscription available, which was Kaspersky AntiVirus. This software doesn’t offer a firewall, parental controls, or password storage, but it does include the Web Anti-Virus feature mentioned above.

Should you wish to bundle add-on software and tools, we recommend either the Kaspersky Plus and Premium plans, both of which offer all-in-one digital security through a host of other Kaspersky tools and services.

Testing Kaspersky for Viruses

After installing the Kaspersky AntiVirus software, we immediately performed a scan of our computer, which fortunately, turned up nothing.

Next, it was time to put Kaspersky through our standard virus detection test that we perform on every antivirus we test. First, we created a sandbox within our computer just to be safe, then we installed Kaspersky inside that sandbox. After that, we downloaded five malware files, all of which were dangerous and sneaky. There’s one camouflaged as a Word file but can actually execute a backdoor attack. There’s another one pretending to be a spreadsheet file. Our personal favorite, though, is the malware hiding inside a .zip archive. Finally, we started a scan.

The result? Kaspersky detected all five malware, and as soon as it did, it quarantined the files to prevent them from spreading and/or affecting other files. We wish we could say that this is normal, but out of all the 40 plus software we’ve tested, Kaspersky belongs to an elite duo that earned a 100-percent score. On average, various antivirus software detects just three out of the five malware files.

And by the way, the other antivirus software that detected all five viruses was Bitdefender. You can read about our virus detection test in our in-depth review of Bitdefender.

Third-Party Tests Corroborate Our Results

Five viruses is a pretty small sample size, we must admit. To make sure we’re on the right track, though, we looked to an independent antivirus testing initiative that publishes their results online.

AV-Test’s most recent tests of Kaspersky for Android and Windows, performed in January and February of 2023, respectively, both gave Kaspersky a 100-percent score. With both software, Kaspersky detected all zero-day malware attacks and all widespread and prevalent malware discovered within four weeks before each test.

Those results show that Kaspersky is indeed great at detecting malware, even the ones that haven’t been added to most malware databases because they are new.

Purchasing and Installing Kaspersky

To us, the best antivirus software doesn’t just detect malware well; it also provides a good user-experience. That also includes a seamless buying and set up process, so let’s backtrack a little and talk about our experience purchasing and installing Kaspersky’s software.

In our experience, buying Kaspersky is straightforward. Its website lists a number of options both for personal and business use. For the former, three options are available: Kaspersky Standard, Plus, and Premium. Unsurprisingly, the most expensive option is what Kaspersky recommends, but we suggest taking a look at each option to see what works best for you and your budget.

For us, the Kaspersky Standard plan fulfilled everything we needed to test Kaspersky’s malware detection capabilities. It was available at an introductory offer of $29.99 for an entire year, plus there was a 30-day money-back policy. Had we wanted to stop our subscription, we could have gotten our money back within the first 30 days. We thought that was a compelling offer for shoppers on the fence.

Once we purchased the license, the download went right through and took under a minute, even on our laggy computer. Unlike some other tiered-price software, we were glad to see that Kaspersky did not immediately try to upsell us. Best of all, there wasn’t a pop-up in sight.

Our Experience Using Kaspersky Anti-Virus

Kaspersky Anti-Virus has a simple, clean interface focused mainly on its primary job of checking for viruses. It’s broken into four main sections: scan, database update, reports, and on-screen keyboard, and it also has links to settings and additional tools. We’ll run through them from the most simple to the most complicated.

On-Screen Keyboard

The on-screen keyboard feature may seem trivial — unnecessary even. But to those familiar with the keylogger method of hacking, this is a nice addition.

Hackers use programs that record keystrokes (a.k.a. keyloggers) to steal personal information, account passwords, and other data we type on our keyboards. It’s a sneaky way to steal data and it’s often left unnoticed.

With the on-screen keyboard, you can enter sensitive information onto your devices without using a physical keyboard, thus bypassing any keyloggers you might have on your devices.

Reports

Just as it sounds, Kaspersky’s Reports section showed us details on the software’s scans of files, web traffic, network threats, and more. That’s also where we found data from one of Kaspersky’s more advanced features, System Watcher. While we thankfully weren’t the victims of a malware attack while testing the product, System Watcher provided us the ability to roll back the impact of a malware attack, like remote file locks.

Database Update

The Database Update section was just as straightforward. It let us know that the software was up to date with all of the latest information about threats, and was set to automatically update at regular intervals. We had the option to set it to refresh at certain times, but we thought it was best to leave the recommended auto updates in place. It’s also possible to run a manual update.

Scans

Onto the most important part! The scans section is the meat and potatoes of this software. The scan menu offered a host of features, the most prominent of which is the Quick Scan. This scan, which we ran right away, took seven minutes. It focused on the areas on our computer most susceptible to viruses and malware. If it found anything troubling, the software would run a full scan of every single piece of information on the machine.

While our quick scan didn’t find anything on our computer, we decided to run a full scan manually, even though Kaspersky noted that it “may take a while and slow down your computer.” In our experience, that’s putting it mildly—the full scan took hours (we started it in the mid-evening and were in bed before it finished) and our computer, which was already on the older and slower side, basically ground to a halt. This was definitely disappointing, though we can’t say Kaspersky didn’t warn us. Surprisingly, everything came back clean!

Other scanning options include Selective Scan, which we used to check out individual folders and files, and a removable drive scan to protect against any dangers on a USB or hard drive. We set each type of scan to run on a schedule of our choice (options included every hour, every week, or every time the application is launched). After our experience with the full scan, we appreciated that Kaspersky offers the option to set the software to only run when the computer is idle so it won’t slow down important work. We ultimately set the software to run a Quick Scan every day and a Full Scan once a month at a time when the computer wasn’t being used.

Despite the ease of changing the settings, we were surprised that the default setting on download was for manual (on-demand) for both basic and full scans. Though a warning stated that Kaspersky didn’t recommend leaving it set to manual, we wouldn’t have found that information had we not checked the settings. We found this strange. A number of other settings are enabled by default (like deletion of malicious tools and automatic launch of the software at computer startup). We did notice, however, that the “Background scan” mode, which scans sections of the computer like the system memory every six hours, was switched on by default. That’s a start, but it’s not enough for total protection. Kaspersky should probably make the scheduling settings more clear so that newer anti-virus software users don’t inadvertently leave their computers unprotected.

As a whole, we found Kaspersky Anti-Virus to be very customizable. We especially loved the fact that there is a setting called “Gamer Mode”. This mode automatically postpones scheduled scans if the computer is running an app like a game in full-screen. As avid gamers, we hate being interrupted by pop-ups or slowed down by programs running in the background, and we can report that we weren’t interrupted at all during our test period.

We also appreciated that the software automatically postponed its tasks when the computer was running on battery or when the disks were running at high loads, reducing slowdowns. And we were grateful that Kaspersky allowed us to easily opt out of seeing special offers or receiving advertising from the company within the app. All in all, the app provided an experience that we found straightforward and customizable, and we appreciated the simple, easy to navigate design.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus Pricing

While Kaspersky offers several different levels of protection that combine antivirus with capabilities like VPNs and child settings, here we’re focusing on the straight antivirus offering (but if you want to learn more about VPNs, read our VPN guide or our list of the best VPN options).

We paid $27.99 for one year of Kaspersky Standard (formerly Anti-Virus), which covered both our Lenovo ThinkPad and two other Windows computers. That price is a first-time customer deal, though, so we’ll be sure to keep an eye on the renewal, which costs $56.99.

A Kaspersky subscription can cover as many as 10 devices, which is perfect for families. Although adults primarily need antivirus software, leaving a child’s smartphone without antivirus is one of the biggest mistakes parents make when setting up a child’s smartphone. Don’t make that mistake.

After all, Kaspersky’s pricing is on the lower end of the spectrum. Keep in mind that the subscription price you’re paying is good for one or two years, so if you do the math, the cost of protecting one device is less than a dollar per month. That and Kaspersky’s skill at detecting viruses and malware make for a good purchase.

Kaspersky is particularly cost-effective if you’re looking to protect a number of devices. One year of protection for 10 devices costs less than $50. For roughly the same price, you can get protection from Kaspersky’s rival Norton for only five devices. You’d need to pay at least $99 to get 10-device protection from Norton, although that subscription plan offers other premium benefits.

From some other brands, 10-device protection is not even available. For example, TotalAV can protect a maximum of six devices with its most advanced plan, which costs $49.99 in the first year.

It’s safe to say that Kaspersky is a cost-effective solution for households with multiple devices.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus App

While we tested Kaspersky’s Windows app for this review, it’s also available for Android and iOS devices, although they weren’t included in the Kaspersky Anti-Virus package we purchased. In the Google Play Store, it’s listed under Kaspersky Mobile Antivirus: AppLock & Web Security, alongside a shiny 4.8 customer rating. With a 4.7 rating, the iOS app can be found under the name Kaspersky Security Cloud & VPNWare on the App store. While we only tested the desktop app, those reviews are certainly a strong sign that the phone versions are also well-designed.