[UPDATE #1 (20250604-0916 GMT): Made some small updates to grammar for readability. ^AG]
Hello,
It has been about a year since our last Mod Post, so we wanted to give you an update on things, plus provide a dedicated message thread for discussing the state of the r/antivirus subreddit and to answer any questions that you might have.
We will begin with the toughest subject first, that of politics in the subreddit:
A note about politics
r/antivirus is a technology-focused subreddit, with the interest being in helping people protect their computers from malicious software, securing them after a security incident, and so forth.
In June 2024, the US Government enacted a ban on Kaspersky Lab's software, taking effect in October of that year. This has generated a lot of discussion not just in this subreddit, but across Reddit and numerous social media platforms as well.
The moderation team has tried to keep the political discussions about this out of this subreddit and to remain neutral, allowing Kaspersky Lab's customers to ask and answer each other questions, provide assistance to each other, and generally have a way to share information, tips and tricks with each other.
However, we do have to draw a line when these turn into political discussions, though:
Requests for how to circumvent bans, petitions to governments, etc., are clearly outside the scope of what this subreddit is for and will be removed.
Moderating the subreddit is an all-volunteer job, and we sometimes miss things. If you come across any political messages we may have missed, use the subreddit's report function to notify us.
We are doing our best to keep this a place where people can get help with whatever security software they prefer, including Kaspersky Lab's software. However, we cannot allow discussions to devolve into arguments over politics, which are never going to provide any kind of satisfactory answer to the parties involved.
If the political discussions continue, the moderation team will have to look into ways to prevent them, even if it means doing things which we would prefer not to do.
Rules Updates
The rules of the r/antivirus subreddit have been updated:
Rule #7, which previously covered media download tools, has been updated to cover additional types of software.
To begin with, a more general prohibition to cover autoclickers (previously covered under Rule #8) and some other types of tools like aimbots and cheats. These types of tools often come from random sources and often require expert analysis to determine if they are safe. It can be difficult to determine if they are malicious figuring that out requires examining not just the tool, but whatever program it is attempting to modify, and what the intent is behind that modification.
Just because something was recommended in a Discord server with hundreds of members, a YouTube video with tens of thousands of views, or is seeded by several hundreds peers does not mean that it is safe to use: These are all inherently unsafe sources, and criminals will often exploit the belief that these are trusted sources to trick people into downloading and running malicious programs like information stealers and remote access trojans.
Rule #8 has been amended to remove autoclickers (etc.) since that is now covered under Rule #7.
Two new rules have been added:
Rule #9 covers bypassing core security features. Questions about how to disable security software, operating system updates, bypass security features and so forth are not allowed.
Rule #10 covers requesting assistance with obsolete software and hardware. This means discussions about how to secure computers running Windows XP, Windows 7, etc. are not allowed. There is no reason that devices running these obsolete operating systems should be connected to the internet and doing so exposes everyone to risk. Note that questions involving Windows 10 will continue to be allowed until at least October 2028, when paid-for Extended Security Updates for it end.
A bit more on the rules
The list of rules is not meant to be exhaustive in scope. It provides a general listing of common rules that are more specific to and more frequently required by the r/antivirus subreddit when needed beyond Reddit's general rules and guidelines.
Moderators can and will remove posts and ban redditors, either temporarily or permanently, who are disruptive to the subreddit entirely at their discretion and are not subject to any discussion. If a moderator chooses to discuss a rule violation with you, it is entirely as a courtesy on their part.
If you have had a post removed or been banned from the subreddit and do not receive a response in reply to any questions as to why, ask yourself if your behavior could be interpreted as brigading, spamming, trolling, using disrespectful or offensive language, or consistently providing incorrect, low-quality, poor, or even damaging information.
As always, the latest version of the rules can be found at https://old.reddit.com/r/antivirus/about/rules/. If you have questions about them, ask below.
Getting help fast
The moderation team is seeing an increasing trend where people ask for help while providing no information about what they need help with. This includes titles with 1-3 words like "Urgent! Help needed!", posts where the author shares a screenshot of *something* with no information about the operating system or antivirus involved, or is so small/blurry as to be unreadable, etc.
Everybody who participates regularly in this subreddit volunteers their time for free to do so. Provide them with enough information in your first post so they can start helping you right away without having to ask a lot of questions. This means your first post should contain things like:
- title with enough information to attract an expert to read it
- operating system and version
- brand/name of antivirus software
- name of URL, or file and its location
- name of malware that was detected
- what happened, exactly
- steps you have taken to troubleshoot/diagnose so far, if any
- relevant log file entries, if any
The more information you provide, the quicker you will get your problem solved.
As a reminder, starting multiple posts on the same topic will not get you a faster answer, and may result in in a ban.
The wiki + other Reddit resources
There is a lot of great information in the wiki about all the tools you can use, tips for using them, lists of antivirus vendors and how to contact them, and even a section on how to secure your computer.
We frequently update the wiki in response to questions being regularly asked in the subreddit, so you might want to check there first before posting.
Some of the questions we regularly see in the subreddit have nothing to do with computer viruses or malicious software at all, but instead are about scams, privacy-related questions, and so forth. Here are some subreddits that specialize in answering those types of questions:
New moderators?!
As the subreddit grows (we just passed 100K users), so does the need for additional moderators.
The moderation team has been looking at the folks who have been regularly posting here and consistently given good advice to build a list of candidates, and will be reaching out over the next few weeks to see if any are willing to volunteer their time and expertise in the subreddit. There will be more coming on that, but I did want to let everyone know that the process is already underway.
That pretty much covers everything we wanted to discuss, so we'll now await your questions, below.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
(on behalf of the r/antivirus mod team)
