{"id":10302,"date":"2018-02-02T15:45:40","date_gmt":"2018-02-02T11:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/frequently-alleged-nonsense\/10302\/"},"modified":"2022-05-05T11:00:16","modified_gmt":"2022-05-05T07:00:16","slug":"frequently-alleged-nonsense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/frequently-alleged-nonsense\/10302\/","title":{"rendered":"Many fictions don’t add up to a fact"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nYou may have noticed some noise around Kaspersky Lab recently. The year 2017 was unprecedented for us: We\u2019ve never seen so many articles from media sources accusing Kaspersky Lab of different kinds of misbehavior \u2014 all without any substantive proof.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t really know who\u2019s behind the noise and where this desire to harm the company comes from, but it\u2019s clearly done with one purpose: to ruin Kaspersky Lab\u2019s reputation as one of the world\u2019s most renowned and trusted cybersecurity companies.<\/p>\n

Most of the articles published feature biased coverage, a lack of alternative positions, and, apparently, zero desire to fact-check. That kind of coverage has nothing to do with independent journalism \u2014 in fact, it\u2019s similar to propaganda. About 80% of the arguments are based on claims from anonymous sources or false accusations, and only about 20% of the information is the truth. The 20% is key to giving the stories a veneer of believability.<\/p>\n

To show you what they do and how they do it, we\u2019ve come up with a collection of the most widespread false accusations and biased opinions about Kaspersky Lab that some journalists are frequently using and borrowing from each other. Here\u2019s how it\u2019s done.<\/p>\n

Fiction: You can search users\u2019 computers using Kaspersky Lab products and steal files from them<\/h3>\n

Fact: Files from users\u2019 computers are uploaded only on rare occasions and only when they are new and behave suspiciously. Threat detection rules, including ones that enable such uploads, are the same for the whole world, and any interested party can inspect them by reviewing database updates.<\/p>\n

Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) technology is a cloud knowledge base that accumulates data about new threats and potentially malicious files. It can upload suspicious files from our customers\u2019 computers to our servers for analysis. But that doesn\u2019t mean it can be used as a remote access tool or as a search engine. An analyst can\u2019t secretly search through random files on users\u2019 devices. Every detection rule issued is available for everyone for one and only one reason: to protect our customers from malware.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also important to note that unlike with many other products on the market, Kaspersky Lab users have control over data sharing \u2014 their participation in KSN is voluntary, and they may disable telemetry reporting at any time.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the best illustration of how KSN technology really works is the incident involving source code from Equation (that is, allegedly related to the NSA) malware being uploaded to our server. A couple of months ago we explained how it all happened; for the whole story, see this post<\/a>, but here is a short version:<\/p>\n