Kaspersky launches free Antivirus software in Australia and around the worldKaspersky launches free Antivirus software in Australia and around the worldEugene Kaspersky isn’t a bloke who mucks around, he also doesn’t mince his words – so today’s announcement from Kaspersky of a free anti-virus software program for the world is a big deal – but it’s also the kind of thing he would do.

In announcing the software via a blog post, Kaspersky says the company has been working on “Kaspersky Free” for almost two years, and the software would roll out globally across the next few months.

It’s not a feature product though, you need to go hunting for it on their website – however, it is there, and has launched in the US and Australia already.

Why? Well the view of Kaspersky is that the more people running their software the more up to date their real-time threat analysis can become.

Plus, as Eugene writes “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!).”

This free software lacks features available in the paid version, so it shouldn’t cannibalise sales, or at least that’s their hope. There’s no parental control, online purchasing protection or VPN coverage.

All in all, it’s a great PR move, more people using Kaspersky and more people talking about it is a good thing in the battle for the Anti-Virus dollar.