At the end of September, Kaspersky forced its un-installation and installed a new antivirus called UltraAV on the computers of close to a million Americans, many of whom were shocked and appalled that they were not asked if they wanted to give their consent for the change. The move was the end result of the U.S. government's ban on all sales of Kaspersky software in the country-and, in theory at least-marked the end of Kaspersky in America. Not everyone has given up, however-the Russian-made antivirus has found a way to continue reaching some Americans in the United States, after all. TechCrunch learned about this fact.

Several of the U.S. citizens expressed on the Reddit that they are standing their ground as Kaspersky's clients. When TechCrunch asked them for the motive, the reasons range from skepticism over the reason for the ban, or they have already paid for it, to quite simply prefer the product over its competitors.

"It is well-known to be the world's best [antivirus], and it has a very long record. There is 0 actual evidence of it being 'spyware' and I cannot blindly believe in something that carries no evidence to support what is being said," wrote Blippyz, a U.S.-based Reddit user, in a direct message to TechCrunch.

Another Reddit user, dubbed YouKnowWho_13, who remains to use Kaspersky antivirus from New York, stated they are not bothered by the allegations that Kaspersky has been taking advantage of its access to some Americans' computers to siphon off sensitive data back to the Russian government.

Hey, I'm just a cashier…,» they said to TechCrunch, implying that they are not an interesting target for cyber spies and adding that the ban on Kaspersky sales was "a bit too harsh" and unnecessary. "[I] used it for 10 years. Force of habit haha. It's a nice product.".

There are two ways these users bypass the sales ban. First, they purchased their license or key before the ban was issued. This way, they do not violate the sales ban and sanctions imposed by sending money to the Moscow-based cybersecurity company. Second, they have a VPN or have manually added a non-U.S. server to the list of update servers, which accordingly makes them appear as not being from the U.S. according to Kaspersky.

Kaspersky could not be immediately reached to respond to the request from TechCrunch.

Avi Fleischer - a pretty long time consistent user of Kaspersky - has been staying in Brooklyn, New York. He said he is still using the software on his home computer.

He doesn't know of other vendors where updates went down, said Fleischer, who added that the "Kaspersky Security Network," a service "designed to receive and process complex global cyber threat data," was inaccessible as of last week — although he could still get updates for virus definitions by pointing the update server to one outside the United States. "And now it's able to update the virus definitions automatically," Fleischer said, adding that he is not using a VPN. YouKnowWho_13 said they bought an international license key off of eBay. Like others, they said they added an update server that's outside of the United States in the Kaspersky app to continue receiving security updates.

According to YouKnowWho_13, once their license key expires, they will turn to some antivirus competitors of the likes of ESET or Bitdefender.

Das1996, another Reddit user, said that they use a VPN to get updates and have a license key that expires in around three or four months. Once that happens, they said that they will choose what to do. But "if the VPN option works well, I'll continue to use 'em," said Das1996.

Domingothegamer, who also registered on the website when they were unable to update their Kaspersky software, said that they still have a three-year license, with two years left, for 10 devices. For him, this decision to leave Kaspersky "feels like a big waste just because of the ban.".

They said they don't even need to use a VPN and that apart from adding new servers to get the updates, "it's just a service like usual.".