Bitdefender Quarantine and other issues. I want the antivirus not to take any action without my consent

DefenceFox

I'm working on a highly complex development PC. Ever since the latest updates, files keep getting moved to quarantine or flagged as suspected viruses. I want to be asked every time what should be done with the files—because they're all fine. It's driving me crazy!

Alexandru_BD

Hello and thanks for joining us here. I see nobody got the courage to reply here, so I'll jump in.😄

Bitdefender is designed so that real-time protection reacts automatically and immediately when a threat is detected. There's currently no global setting along the lines of “ask me before taking any action and do nothing without my approval.” The reason is that delaying action in the case of a genuine infection could create a window in which malicious code is allowed to execute. Then the antivirus would fail at its job. So no, Bitdefender will not wait for your call when it finds something suspicious and it will automatically block or quarantine detected threats.
There's no way to change that behavior and there won't be any.
Yes, false positives may occur, but this can happen with any other antivirus and usually, the concept is the same, for the sake of prevention.

Now, if we're talking about a development machine, the good news is that there are still several ways to fine-tune this behavior. The first step I would take is to add all trusted development folders as exclusions. Under Protection → Antivirus → Settings → Manage Exceptions, you can exclude known and trusted files or project folders from antivirus scanning. I would recommend keeping these exclusions as narrow as possible, for example specific build or output directories, rather than excluding very large folder structures or entire drives.

If the detection is coming from Advanced Threat Defense (ATD) module, you may also need to create an exception there for the affected trusted application. Keep in mind that ATD supports .exe files only, so if you're working with other types of files, these cannot be added here. Go to Protection → Advanced Threat Defense → Settings → Manage Exceptions. This protection layer is behavior-based, so it may sometimes detect self-developed, newly compiled, or unusually behaving applications even when no traditional malware signature is involved.

And of course you can also restore legitimate files from quarantine. Go to Protection → Antivirus → Settings → Manage Quarantine. As far as I know, the quarantine settings also include the option to create exception for restored files or something like that. When enabled, a restored file is also excluded from future scans so that it is not immediately quarantined again. That could prove handy.

Last but not least, if you are certain that a specific file is clean but it is still being detected, I also recommend submitting it to the Bitdefender Labs as a possible false positive. Confirmed false detections can then be corrected through regular detection updates. Should you need to submit a sample to them, you can use the dedicated form available at the link below:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/29358/

And I conclude with a personal observation. For a development environment, I wouldn't recommend to disable protection entirely, but instead you can turn off the Bitdefender security modules one by one to determine which one triggers the detection, and then exclude the affected project or build directories as narrowly as possible. You can usually find this information under Bitdefender notifications in the corresponding event.

I hope this helps.