Security giant Kaspersky has recently accused Microsoft for showing partiality towards third-party security solutions in its latest version of operating system. According to Kaspersky, Windows 10 is forcing the users to get away from third-party security solutions and use Windows Defender instead.
In the company blog, founder Eugene Kaspersky explained how Microsoft is affecting the security companies. He also called for an investigation against Microsoft in European Union and Russia.
First and foremost, Kaspersky says, Windows 10 disables incompatible security software when installing OS updates and replaces them with Windows Defender. And while at first glance this might seem like the right thing to do, what people didn’t know is that Microsoft is now giving developers only one week to test their security solutions and make them compatible with new OS versions, down from no less than two months. This helps Microsoft push Windows Defender on a Windows 10 system, Kaspersky explains.
Then, even if an antivirus product is installed and running on a system correctly, Windows Defender shows up every once in a while to display a warning that encourages users to turn it on and uninstall third-party protection.
Antivirus vendors are also struggling to deal with another restriction introduced by Microsoft in Windows 10 which limits their option of warning users about their licenses expiring in the first three days after expiration. The notification is only displayed in the Windows Security Center, Kaspersky points out, and nobody sees it.
“It’s a big deal because this is the crucial period during which a significant number of users seek extensions of their security software licenses. And if a user forgets to renew a license, then Microsoft deactivates the existing AV, and turns on Defender,” he says.
Kaspersky then goes on to explain that Windows Defender isn’t even that good to be so aggressively promoted by Microsoft, pointing to interdependent antivirus tests that put it at the bottom of the pack.