Kaspersky Antivirus Can Cause A Problem
Kaspersky Antivirus, now called Kaspersky Security Cloud, is an excellent antivirus program for Windows. It is consistently rated in the top few antivirus programs. Being a Russian company, it has had its political problems. I’m not going to get into those problems. I have no secrets that Russia would ever be interested in finding. I find that my Kaspersky Security Cloud Free version is an effective antivirus that is non-intrusive. It doesn’t continually attempt to get you to upgrade to the paid version. Even when it does mention the upgrade, there is usually a check-box to dismiss the message, so you never see it again. I call that user-friendly, especially in a free program.
The problem with Kaspersky has to do with some network communication problems it can cause. I’ll describe the examples I came across and then tell you how to resolve them with a simple Kaspersky setting change.
Kaspersky Problem With TurboTax
One major problem is that Kaspersky doesn’t “play well” with TurboTax. The error messages occurred when activating TurboTax, when using TurboTax to download data from a financial account, and when trying to file a return. The activation error message is “We’ve run into an issue connecting with your computer and can’t launch TurboTax.”. The financial account download error message is “This import was unsuccessful. Internal server error.”. The filing return error message is “We’re unable to transmit your returns because your connection is not secure. A secure connection is necessary to keep your information safe.”.
Kaspersky Network Issues
Kaspersky used to not “play well” with Trend Micro HouseCall, an effective on-demand antivirus tool. When launching Trend Micro HouseCall, it would think there was no Internet connection. However, it appears that Trend Micro has fixed this problem.
The point here is that if you are using Kaspersky and are having network communication problems, you should first try this Kaspersky setting change to see if it resolves the issue.
The Kaspersky Setting Change
The Kaspersky setting change is as follows:
1. Open the Kaspersky user interface by left-clicking once on the systray Kaspersky icon. It will look like this:
2. Left-click on the gear shown in the red box in the image above.
3. Left-click on “Network settings” as shown in the red box in the image below:
4. Page down on the right side of the window until you see the “Encrypted connection scanning” section as shown in the image below:
5. The Kaspersky default for network encryption is “Always scan encrypted connections” as shown above. However, sometimes it gets in the way, as it does in a big way in TurboTax and possibly in other programs as well. The solution is to choose the “Do not scan encrypted connections” option shown above and then left-click on the “Save” button.
6. If the above procedure resolves your problem, remember to change this setting back to “Always scan encrypted connections” when you finish getting around the problem. For maximum Kaspersky protection, making this change should NOT be permanent. It’s only a possible temporary fix to get you around the problem.
So if you use Kaspersky and come across some network communication issues, give the procedure above a try.
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