Over the weekend, Google removed Kaspersky's Android security apps from the Google Play store and disabled the Russian company's developer accounts.
Users have been reporting over the last week that Kaspersky's products (including Kaspersky Endpoint Security and VPN & Antivirus by Kaspersky) are no longer available on Google Play in the United States and other world regions.
Kaspersky confirmed the issue on the company's official forums on Sunday and said that it's currently investigating why its software is no longer available on Google's app store.
I’m confused: Kaspersky just finished transferring its endpoint security software in these regions to a different company’s product via a software update. Kaspersky has sent messages out to customers saying that they are leaving this marketplace.
Given this context, I can see no reason why Google would leave their Android product available when they’re not technically allowed to sell it and Kaspersky has said that they won’t be selling it into these markets going forward. It does, of course, prevent Kaspersky from pulling another bait and switch and “updating” mobile devices to a third party product. That would be the reason for locking out the developer accounts.
Google has removed it across all regions. My play store is set to India, and they pulled it here as well. That's something of a global coup.
That’s really interesting. I wonder if it’s due to Google being a US company?
Yeah but that doesn't mean they need to enforce US laws in other jurisdictions where it means fuck all.
Actually, it may. The US has some odd laws where US companies have to enforce US restrictions globally. However, it wasn’t my understanding that Kaspersky was on any of the lists that would have resulted in this. Possibly it boils down to a Google ToS violation?
I’m sure we’ll be hearing more details this week.
Are you getting better deals with the India setting?
Prices are less than 10% of what they are in the US.
How did you do that?
There's an app called Cheq, which is a means for foreigners to buy stuff in India using their QR payment system, that's normally restricted for citizens only.
Follow the link on https://cheq.money to the correct version for your phone, there are a bunch of other apps and service providers piggybacking off of the name.
They'll charge you a sign-on fee of 999 Rupees (about 10 bucks), I'd suggest you use a virtual credit card from wise.com or something for that. I inherently distrust random online shops in third world countries. Once you've done that, they ask for your location to perform an in-person ID verification to make sure you actually live in India.
That's the point where you choose a random location out in the sticks. Say Lemru town in Chhattisgarh State or something - you might try a few until you find something where they show you a local account manager but no physical shop to perform the activation. That part is key.
Contact the account manager via whatsapp (can be registered with your regular phone number, the service is aimed at tourists and foreign residents alike). Normally they are supposed to come visit you, but they can't be bothered to drive 3h to see you, especially if you press it a bit and call it urgent. Eventually they'll just ask to send a passport copy directly to them, and they'll activate it remotely.
You can then use a VPN to set your play store (should work for Apple store as well) country to India, enter a random address there, select "UPI" as payment method, and open the Cheq app when prompted. After a couple hours you'll get an email that your play store country has been changed, and from then on you can use Cheq to buy stuff for cheap. Top up the balance with virtual cards whenever needed, you can't use non-indian credit cards directly in google play. You can however buy gift cards on amazon.in with them, have the code send to yourself and redeem it, that works without problems.
Damn, that's pretty clever. Thank you for the writeup!
Unless they're in India, I don't see how that's possible. Google will block you from doing payments if your account is on another country for too long (after a month or so from my experience), and after a year they'll forcefully move your account to the country you're residing in.