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Kaspersky Lab Files Antitrust Complaints against Microsoft in Europe

Kaspersky Lab recently filed antitrust complaints against Microsoft to both the European Commission and German Federal Cartel Office after filing a similar complaint with Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) last year.

The security company's Founder and CEO Eugene Kaspersky wrote in a blog that the Microsoft Window's 10 operating system systematically uses a series of tricks to confuse and or persuade users to switch to Microsoft's own Defender security product and in some cases automatically default to Defender, while subsequently deactivating third-party anti-virus solutions, such as Kaspersky products.

Kasperksy said Windows 10 tries to confuse users by changing the OS' settings, uninstalling user-installed apps, and replacing them with standard Microsoft ones as well as Microsoft giving vendors insufficient notice for compatibility updates to quickly render products obsolete so that it could default to Defender.

“We want to see all security solutions being able to work on the Windows platform on a level playing field,” Kaspersky Lab Founder Eugene Kaspersky said in a Jun 6 blog post. “And we want to see users being able to decide for themselves what they want and consider important to them.”

Microsoft says that it reached out to Kaspersky months ago offering to meet at an executive level to better understand the concerns but the meeting has yet to take place. 

“Microsoft's primary objective is to keep customers protected and we are confident that the security features of Windows 10 comply with competition laws," a Microsoft spokesperson told SC Media. "We're always interested in feedback from other companies and we engage deeply with antimalware vendors and have taken a number of steps to address their feedback."

UPDATE: This story has been updated to include comments from Microsoft. 

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