Microsoft Confirms that it has Disabled Third-party Anti-Virus Software “Temporarily” In Windows 10 to keep users secure.
The statement made by Microsoft appears after the founder of Kaspersky Lab, recorded an antitrust complaint with the EC (European Commission), which blames Microsoft for disabling third party anti-virus software in Windows 10 without the permission of users to prefer the built-in Windows Defender.
It asked questions about Microsoft’s potential violation of its place in the market “to fiercely promote its own – inferior – security software (Windows defender) at the expense of users”
“AV software can be deeply entwined within the operating system, we doubled down on our efforts to help AV vendors be compatible with the latest updates. By the time the most recent Windows 10 Creators Update released on April 11, for example, nearly all of the antivirus applications that Microsoft tested were fully compatible. In fact, Microsoft’s application compatibility teams found that roughly 95% of Windows 10 PCs had an antivirus application installed that was already compatible with Windows 10 Creators Update.”
“For the small number of applications that still needed updating, we built a feature just for AV apps that would prompt the customer to install a new version of their AV app right after the update completed. To do this, we first temporarily disabled some parts of the AV software when the update began. We did this work in partnership with the AV partner to specify which versions of their software are compatible and where to direct customers after updating.”
Kaspersky claims that Windows Defender is a poor product, pointing to AV-Comparitive tests that show it is not a goof AntiVirus, including Avast, AVG, BitDefender, BullGuard, F-Secure, Kaspersky, and Trend Micro.