No way to make Bitdefender ask what to do?

DavidGB

I'm a new Bitdefender user - bought and installed Bitdefender Total Security yesterday. Since moving to Windows in 2002 I have always used 3rd party antivirus and firewalls, but assorted free ones up to now. Installed Bitdefender yesterday evening, ran the Quick San, which was clean, then started working through the documentation and options. I perhaps foolishly started a System Scan wile still reading the docs and checking and changing settings. The scan took 18 hours, mostly because of the two USB HDDs connected to the laptop, both with about 3TB of data on them. I am ... upset by what Bitdefender did during the scan. I  knew my machine was 'clean' for my definition of clean. I did know that in the current working data folders and their backups of all my emails, received and sent since 2002 by my old and new email programs, their were emails containing viruses - but they are perfectly safe there and are part of my full email history I wish to keep. I also know I have some programs that many AV products detect as malware even though they are perfectly legitimate tools for one's own use on one's own system, like some of the Nirsoft applications to e.g. show, sort and allow the export of the passwords stored in my Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome installs.

What I expected from use of a number of other AV products was for Bitdefender to flag what it thought was malware and allow me the option of what to do with each item, like delete, disinfect, quarantine or ignore - and I really hoped fr a 'create exception' option. I could then see exactly what kinds of things Bitdefender does and doesn't detect, and make appropriate configuration changes such as defining particular folders to be scan exceptions. What I GOT was 123 'unresolved items' - i.e. it asked me what to do, as I wanted and expected though sadly no 'create exception' action - and 120 'RESOLVED; items where Bitdefender had disinfected or (mostly) deleted things WITHOUT ASKING - a few utility programs and a whole stack of emails, mostly in multiple copies between the old and enw email program eamil stores plus manual copies of thsoe folders as back ups. It's a massacre. And especially for my old email program, having emails externally rewritten or deleted will mean that all the groups will be corrupted and likely even group recovery will fail. And it did not find a single thing that actually was unknown to me and did deserve to be deleted, disinfected and quarantined.

I can fix it all. I can re-download the removed apps and recreate the way I had them installed. And for the emails, while the manually copied data folder backups are trashed too, the Acronis True Image backups are not so I can restore them. But I am NOT happy.

I do not like, welcome or expect programs that think they know best and act ignorantly, with unwarranted assumptions and without asking. There should be an option in Bitdefender to have it NOT take automatic action on things it finds, but just report and ask for user input as to what to do. Is there such an option? I couldn't find it going through every settings option I could find.

If there is no such option, I will be really regretting having paid for Bitdefender Total Security. If this was a free AV I'd shrug, uninstall and move on, but having paid for a year's license, this is upsetting. I understand that for many completely non-techie users who never even open a settings panel, a default setting to automatically 'fix' things the way the program thinks is likely to be best is appropriate, but it should jut be a SETTING that can be changed to give the user who wants it full control over the actions the program takes.

DavidGB

Oh, and one other thing. On my Android phone, Bitdefender is screaming that there is an issue and it is 'at risk' because of one app it doesn't like, and is insisting I remove it. But there is nothing wrong with the app. It is NOT a threat. It is an app by the phone manufacturer for a previous model phone by the same manufacturer I used to use for linking phone to PC by USB cable and providing various functions when they are linked. I put a copy on the new phone because the manufacturer did not make an equivalent for the new one, and while not all app functions work on the new phone, most do and are useful from time to time. And other AVs, like Avast Pro, have no objection to it. But I cannot find anyway to get Bitdefender to shut up and accept my view that the app is OK.

DSperber

I agree fully.

Turns out Bitdefender will scan not only your external USB drives, but all network drives as well... anything with a drive letter is, by default, considered eligible for investigation by the full system scan.  I have all the partitions of my PC's on my home LAN workgroup mapped as network drives to the other machines, so that I can get to any partition from any PC no matter where I'm sitting.  So I couldn't figure out why the file count was up in the many millions until I canceled it and looked at what was going on.

To replace the default full scan, I had to create my own "custom full scan", including only the local drives of that PC.  And I scheduled this custom scan, with "manage scans".

As far as actions to take when a suspected candidate is discovered, I also agree with you that the proposed list of actions to take (which should be MY decision, not some default taken by the program) should include every other normal reasonable choice that other products offer.  Instead, Bitdefender only shows "take proper action" or "ignore".  Well, if proper action is simply to delete something (and I didn't know that), that seems a bit curt and harsh. I'd like to be able to define folder/file exceptions, etc.  So, like you, I expected "proper action" to probably include a "move to quarantine" (like a trash can step) where I could then decide what to do, clearly, and myself... which might be to delete, or not.

I have my own current MAJOR malfunction issue with the latest Bitdefender version that was just released this past week (including "anti-tracker" functionality, along with probably other fixes and enhancements), and in my detective work trying to chase down the cause of the failure (absolutely now proven to be 100% due to the new Bitdefender, with no problem occurring prior to the new version), I attempted to "disable" Bitdefender by un-checking all of the categories on the "Protections" page. I assumed this would be the right way to do it, since there was no single "on/off" master switch. Well, this might be true, but it apparently didn't disable the entire product since my failure symptom was still occurring. So clearly it was due to something else inside of Bitdefender that got installed, but didn't get disabled by un-checking everything on the Protections page.  Only when I totally uninstalled Bitdefender completely (and reinstalled Microsoft Security Essential + Malwarebytes Premium) did my failure symptom finally disappear and normal behavior returned.  Very disturbing.

So that's where I am now. I, too, had bought a 5-seat license for a year, to replace MSE + MBAM on win7 (or Windows Defender + MBAM on Win8.1 and Win10) that I'd been using forever. But now I've uninstalled Bitdefender and reverted back to my previous setups, until the Bitdefender engineers can figure out what the story is with my failure symptom. I've offered to let one of my failing machines be used as a "lab rat", but am still awaiting the promised contact from their engineers in response to my open ticket.

Not a pleased new customer, am I.

 

Crapbag

tl:dr

lost a sale with me right there

why is this so difficult ??????

Just ask before acting

what happens:

install Bitdefender

it deletes all your shit

then you have to try and restore it all

What should happen:

any suspicious stuff

bitdefender pops up

says why its suspicious

ask:

block

delete

allow (add exception)

ignore

thats it, otherwise piss off and shut up