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Terri Stevens
Legend
March 13, 2017
Question

Off topic but might be useful if you use Kaspersky Security

  • March 13, 2017
  • 4 replies
  • 4088 views

Hi guys,

I'd be interested to know if any of you have had problems posting negative reviews on Amazon? I recently bought Kaspersky Internet Security 2017-mostly because as a moderator here I click on lots of links and never know whether they are safe or not. Anyhow I came across a bad bug in the product. Essentially if your router uses a 192.168.1.254 gateway, as is the case with all British Telecom routers-the UK's largest internet service provider, Kaspersky blocks access to the router settings. You therefore cannot do simple things like change the router password or the Wi-Fi settings-so not exactly trivial.

I thought this was quite useful information to include in a product review at Amazon but they rejected it. It is a bug now confirmed by Kaspersky Labs and won't be fixed until next year when KIS2018 comes out. Call me cynical but the fact Amazon refused to publish a negative review about a best selling product makes me wonder how slanted the customer reviews on Amazon actually are!  Below is a copy of the review they rejected-can anyone see anything even mildly wrong there? I think the moral of the story is don't believe a word of the reviews that are posted on Amazon as their interest is sales not informing customers of the facts. Anyhow if you have KIS2017 and a BT contract this information might save you some hassle as it took me 2 hours to figure out what was happening.

This is what I submitted.

I have mixed feelings about this product. I'd rate Kaspersky as the best security software available if you have to regularly click on unknown links or visit suspect websites, which might sound dodgy but as forum moderator I do that all the time, and Kaspersky keeps me safe. However there is an horrendous bug in the 2017 version. Basically if you have BTInternet you will not be able to access your hub manager. This may not be a problem generally, but if for example you wished to change your Wi-Fi settings or turn it off you wouldn't be able to. The reason for this is the router is located at 192.168.1.254 which is contrary to Netgear and others where 192.168.1.1 is the default gateway. The genius developers at Kaspersky Labs didn't take this into account with KIS2017 and access to 192.168.1.254 is blocked and cannot be unblocked-hence you cannot control the BT Infinity hub. Their tech support say this will be fixed in KIS2018-so in 11 months time which is pretty poor in my opinion. KIS2016 doesn't have the problem incidentally. If you have KIS2017 and want to access your hub you need to uninstall Kaspersky 2017, access the hub and then reinstall Kaspersky again. This might sound over critical but for a security product to prevent you changing security parameters like a router password or Wi-Fi encryption settings makes a nonsense of their company mission statement. Hence I have given this product a single star rating and couldn't recommend it to anyone who uses BT Internet and I believe PlusNet. I Should say despite screwing up access to the router , broadband performance is not affected.

Many apologies for being so off the subject of CC, but I found just one reference to this issue on the whole web and after Google spiders our forum the issue may be easier for people in the future to track down.

Terri 

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    4 replies

    Cactus Cowboy
    Inspiring
    March 20, 2017

    Think this post has been played out for all it was worth don't you think. I wish a intelligent moderator would button it up.

    Terri Stevens
    Legend
    March 20, 2017

    A moderator took your advice cowboy and locked the thread, but I'm a moderator as well and so have unlocked it. I agree the discussion has run it's course but I don't support locking threads that are active and only a few days old. I don't know which mod locked this thread but unless there was something nasty going on and there wasn't then their judgement was flawed. If people want to post to this it is up to them and not us to truncate the conversation. Like all threads it will die a natural death.

    Nancy OShea
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    March 20, 2017

    I agree with Terri.  Locking threads is only warranted when a) there's a duplicate post, b) the original post is several years old / totally out of date and c) when the discussion devolves into contentious name calling or worse.  Fortunately, none of that applies here.   We are all civil adults.

    Getting back to Private IP addresses for a moment.   I just saw a TV program about a real life cyber attack by a jilted lover.   She (the attacker) was so mad at her former fiance for calling it quits, she waged an all out assault on him personally & professionally by exploiting his private IP addresses (home and work) to make it look like HE was harassing her.   I won't go into details except to say she was relentless and her antics got this poor man fired from his job & falsely arrested 3 times.

    Ultimately, she messed up & left a traceable path which landed her in prison for 9 years + 19 years parole.   The victims however are still dealing with the aftermath.

    Posting IPs in a public forum is probably not a good idea.   You don't know who is on the receiving end or how much access to other information they have about you:  ie. phone numbers, Amazon accounts, etc...  that can be traced to your physical address.

    Nancy

    Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
    Eternal Warrior
    Inspiring
    March 17, 2017

    Sadly I think the fact you tried to post your IP address may have been the reason for rejection?

    Just Shoot Me
    Legend
    March 17, 2017

    The IP she posted is a Private address. All 192.168.x.x addresses are in the Private domain and can't be reached from the internet. They are for home/office networks. The computer that I am posting this reply from has an IP of 192.168.1.100. My router is 192.168.1.1 and my Cable modem is 192.168.100.1.

    The AT&T/Bellsouth modem/router combo box I use to use, when I was using Bellsouth/AT&T as an internet provider, used 192.168.1.254 as the router sections IP address.

    What is a Private IP Address?

    https://www.google.com/search?q=Private+IP+addresses&oq=Private+IP+addresses&aqs=chrome.0.69i59.6272j0j9&sourceid=chrome…

    Terri Stevens
    Legend
    March 17, 2017

    that's quite right, but Eternal Warrior could have a point if Amazon don't know the difference between public and private IP addresses. From what I've heard Amazon is a pretty tight fisted company and pays even senior management people a fraction of what other companies do. It is possible they may have thought they were somehow protecting me I guess. A classic case of if you pay peanuts you end of with employees having the IQ of monkeys

    Cactus Cowboy
    Inspiring
    March 14, 2017

    So Terry, let's me see if I follow along with what I've read. You say that you contacted the software company first and they acknowledged the bug and said it would be addressed in a 2018 release and that you do have version 2016 and it works with your router. I would presume you've re-installed 2016 and only upgraded for added protection and security features. If you haven't then I'd recommend re-installing it. You've been around the forums long enough to know how software works. Not often do these upgrades or new versions come out completely baked and Adobe has it's fair share. I myself have an old Dell Optiplex 990 that's at least 7 years old running an ancient Windows 7 OS that's practically no longer supported, with a meager 16 gigs of ram; a couple of HD's at a paltry 150 megs apiece. The only software I have installed are Adobe Illustrator CS6 and Photoshop CS5. Everything; I mean everything, runs beautifully without a burp or bump. It's happy and I'm happy. I have no antivirus installed other than what came bundled with Win7 and have had no problems whatsoever. My modem I rent from my internet service provider and it works fine. I'm in absolutely no hurry to change anything or upgrade to anything. I'm not fixing nothing or tinkering with anything if it ain't broke and is working fine. Take my advice leave well enough alone. Amazon, Adobe, Windows, Apple or anyone one else don't always listen to anyone...just like you don't have to listen to me.    

    Terri Stevens
    Legend
    March 15, 2017

    Hi,

    No until recently I just used Windows Defender and didn't have any commercial anti virus software. I switched to Kaspersky a few months ago after I started moderating here on the Adobe forum. I don't know if you realise, but Adobe goes to lengths to protect the people who come to these forums. The boards JIVE software scans most of the incoming input but anything it is not sure about gets put into a queue for a human to moderate. If the moderator gets it right you don't see harmful links, spam, potential fraudsters, obscene language- that sort of thing. However, this does mean the moderator needs to check out links and maybe some check downloads-must admit I don't do the latter though. You therefore need sound antivirus software better than the free stuff that comes with the OS.

    I discovered last week that I could not access my router through any browser to change its configuration. At first I thought the web server in the router had failed , but quickly realised Kaspersky was blocking access to it's IP address. I did the obvious and uninstalled Kaspersky and straight away my router was accessible. I then put Kaspersky back and the router was inaccessible. Knowing what was wrong I went to the Kaspersky Labs forum online and found just one reference to this from an OP-that OP had contacted the paid for Kaspersky technical support and been told it was a bug in the latest version of KIS2017 and there was no plan to fix it. In effect the fix will be to buy KIS2018 when it comes out in late Autumn. For now downgrading to KIS2016 will fix it, but unless you regularly need to access your router configuration that is hardly worth it. As this is an acknowledged problem I therefore decided to tell Amazon customers about it through a validated buyer review, but for some reason Amazon didn't want their customers to know. You can't talk to anyone at Amazon , it seems to be totally automated. So in order to make information on this problem searchable online I posted here. Google spiders the Adobe forums and so in a few days anyone else with this problem will now be able to find the solution. In some ways posting here is more effective than posting a review at Amazon as Amazon blocks Google bots indexing their reviews and so they are not easily searchable. The review I posted was fair and not particularly negative about Kaspersky , but took five or six minutes to write and I felt Amazon wasted my time maybe to prevent sales of the product being affected-Kaspersky is a best seller. It's nothing to me but I won't give feedback on anything I buy from them in the future or believe the reviews from others on their website.

    Finally I disagree that Adobe would allow CC customers to wait a year over something that can be easily fixed. Sure Creative Cloud has bugs that aren't fixed, but most of those require a radical rewrite of some of the apps to fix them. Kaspersky could fix the issue I identified simply by telling it's software not to block access to IP: 192.168.1.254 through a 'rule' - a simple patch would do that but they don't want to spend any money it seems. Well it's their reputation that gets damaged!

    Just Shoot Me
    Legend
    March 14, 2017

    I see nothing wrong with your review. I see negative reviews on Amazon all the time, 1 and 2 star reviews are common, at least here in the USA Amazon site.

    Terri Stevens
    Legend
    March 14, 2017

    Thanks for that. I do some moderation here at Adobe so am aware of the kind of thing that gets rejected, but for the life of me couldn't see anything wrong with those comments. I'm in England so maybe the policy at Amazon UK is different to the US, but I won't bother to review anything at Amazon again. I now can't but help think Amazon censors fact based adverse comments to avoid putting purchasers off. They have to let some through, but I wouldn't put it past them to write mildly adverse comments themselves just to avoid generating suspicion.

    Anyhow they lost out in the end as I was going to buy 6 monitors for my group at work yesterday and placed the £3000 order with another company instead-Amazon is never the only game in town.

    Just Shoot Me
    Legend
    March 14, 2017

    Although I am an Amazon Prime member I rarely buy things from Amazon. I use it mostly for the videos, Included with Prime, and to rent new released movies.

    Like you said they aren't the only game in town.

    But Amazon doesn't Make anything, that I'm aware of. So why they would filter out negative reviews of any product doesn't make a lot of sense. Its not like they bought 10,000 piece of any of the product they are selling. Maybe that is different in the UK. Here in the states (Colonies) they use larger distribution centers that deal with many different vendors.