Kaspersky Lab CEO Eugene Kaspersky yesterday announced the worldwide rollout of Kaspersky Free, a free limited version of Kaspersky Internet Security.
“There are a lot of users who don’t have the ~$50 to spend on premium protection; therefore, they install traditional freebies (which have more holes than Swiss cheese for malware to slip through) or they even rely on Windows Defender (ye gods!),” Kaspersky Lab founder Eugene Kaspersky said in a blog post.
Kaspersky Free will offer:
- File Anti-Virus, which protects the computer file system.
- Mail Anti-Virus, which checks inbound and outbound mail for viruses and other malicious programs.
- Web Anti-Virus, which intercepts and blocks scripts on websites should they pose a threat to your computer. With Web Anti-Virus enabled, all traffic is controlled and dangerous websites are blocked automatically.
- IM Anti-Virus, which maintains security while using instant messaging applications.
- Anti-Phishing, which checks whether web-addresses are on the list of phishing websites.
- On-Screen Keyboard, which prevents malefactors from intercepting information that the user enters with a standard external keyboard.
Since many features are removed, Kaspersky Free is lighter on system resources and quicker than paid version. Kaspersky also highlighted that this free version doesn’t come with advertising-oriented user-habit tracking and confidentiality infringements.
The roll-out is going to be done over four months in waves as per different regions. The first wave will be the U.S.A., Canada, and many of the Asia Pacific countries. September: India, Hong Kong, Middle East, Africa, Turkey and Latin America. October: Europe, Japan and South Korea. November: Vietnam and Thailand.
