Please Stop Reporting Cookies As Infected

pdutta

Dear BitDefender,

I've been using your software since 2011, and you still insist on reporting cookies as viruses -- see picture:

(You've labelled a DoubleClick (a Google company) cookie as a virus. I doubt Google will respond well to accusations that it's distributing viruses).

Your behaviour is misleading because cookies are not self-replicating bits of code. They are not even malware in a general sense, because they are not executable code. I have read your support article on cookie threats, and it's accurate enough as far as it goes, but it completely ignores the above points.

I don't know why you insist upon doing this. The obvious fix would be to amend the GUI so that it says "xxx viruses and yyy cookies found". Or even, "xxx malware and yyy spyware found".

Some of the forum posts have claimed that BitDefender was designed to be a silent security solution for novices. In that case, please stop scaring novices with messages like "a virus was found on your PC" when in fact only a cookie was found.

My problem with this sort of mislabelling is that it prevents me from recommending BitDefender to friends and family, because I don't want to deal with their questions about why their computer is infected every single time they run a scan. So for novices I recommend Windows 8's built-in antivirus, which in my opinion is far more accurate about what it reports. So this results in lower sales for you.

Can you please fix this?

busterbuddy

Dear BitDefender,

I've been using your software since 2011, and you still insist on reporting cookies as viruses -- see picture:

(You've labelled a DoubleClick (a Google company) cookie as a virus. I doubt Google will respond well to accusations that it's distributing viruses).

Your behaviour is misleading because cookies are not self-replicating bits of code. They are not even malware in a general sense, because they are not executable code. I have read your support article on cookie threats, and it's accurate enough as far as it goes, but it completely ignores the above points.

I don't know why you insist upon doing this. The obvious fix would be to amend the GUI so that it says "xxx viruses and yyy cookies found". Or even, "xxx malware and yyy spyware found".

Some of the forum posts have claimed that BitDefender was designed to be a silent security solution for novices. In that case, please stop scaring novices with messages like "a virus was found on your PC" when in fact only a cookie was found.

My problem with this sort of mislabelling is that it prevents me from recommending BitDefender to friends and family, because I don't want to deal with their questions about why their computer is infected every single time they run a scan. So for novices I recommend Windows 8's built-in antivirus, which in my opinion is far more accurate about what it reports. So this results in lower sales for you.

Can you please fix this?

The only cookies my New BD IS warns of are tracking cookies.

Georgia

@ pdutta

Thank you for your feedback.

In the Events list, "Virus name" is used as a generic term to refer to any malware type. It does not mean that cookies are viruses.

Please take some time to read this article about cookies and how they can harm the security of your computer:

http://www.bitdefender.com/support/What-ar...-threats-1.html

Also, cookies are not detected by the on-access scanning of Bitdefender, they only appear when a scan ends, which is normal and FaD (functions as designed).

This topic will not make the subject of further debates. Thank you for your understanding.