Twitter Inc said on Friday that it has banned ads from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, saying the cyber-security company’s business model conflicts with advertising rules and citing U.S. government claims that Kaspersky has ties to Russian intelligence agencies, Reuters reports.
Twitter confirmed the ban in an email to Reuters after Kaspersky Lab co-founder Eugene Kaspersky disclosed the development in a blog post on Friday, saying that the company learned of the ban in early January.
The ban follows charges by Washington that Kaspersky Lab has close ties to intelligence agencies in Moscow and its software could be used to enable Russian spying, which prompted the Trump administration to ban its products from U.S. government networks.
Kaspersky Lab has repeatedly denied those allegations, saying it will open up its code for inspection so that experts can hunt for vulnerabilities in its products that could be exploited by intelligence agencies, and it has asked a U.S. federal court to overturn the American ban.
Eugene Kaspersky said in his blog post that he was surprised by Twitter’s ban and asked the company to reconsider.
“We haven’t violated any written – or unwritten – rules, and our business model is quite simply the same template business model that’s used throughout the whole cybersecurity industry: We provide users with products and services, and they pay us for them,” he said.
Department of Homeland Security cyber-security official Jeanette Manfra said her agency has not instructed U.S. companies to punish Kaspersky.