Major Design Flaw / Usability Issue !

I lost my primary hard drive and had to install a new one and restore from a two day old backup.

After working for over a week to get the system back to where it should be I decided to use a Bitdefender Scan of newly reloaded Primary hard drive.

Unfortunately, I did not catch that this was NOT limited only to my primary drive and the scanner checked all of my hard drives (18TB in total, but only about 9TB used.

At the end of the scan, I expected to have a window showing any "hit" so I could decide what to do, unfortunatley the Scan was actually a SCAN AND AUTOMATIC DELETE which deleted 481 of my files, many of which were between 10-20 years old due to "Suspicious Cloud". Many of these were important files and emails for both personal and business reasons.

That was only the beginning of my problems, I clicked the "View resolved issues" link which opened the Solved issues window to see that;

  1. The window is not resizable so I could not see the entire Path and Filename of the files deleted, however I could when I hovered over each individual entry.
  2. There was no way to resize the columns to see more of the filename/path.
  3. The window is somehow protected so I could not even copy the data, ctrl+a would do nothing, dragging the mouse to select items would not work and even trying to capture the window image of the text with snagit would not work since there is NO WAY to see the complete filename/path.
  4. There is no LOG file created that holds the filename/path

So now I must manually go through all 481 deleted entries by hovering over each one and then manually writing down the filename/path by hand.

Not a pleasant, or quick, process.

Having spent over 40 years in IT serving as everything from programmer, systems analyst, business analyst and project manager there is just NO EXCUSE for the Design flaw or Complete Lack of Usability in this area !

Comments

  • Hello @JosephJ ,

    At the end of every scan, we get get the logs. These log files (xml format) can be accessed as well. Please have a look at the below link and see if this helps you:

    Step by step procedures:

    https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/1477/


    1. Were you able to access that file?
    2. Can you get the details about the past scan in the Notifications section of Bitdefener where you can see all events listed


    Also like always you can submit a ticket directly to Bitdefender team which will be addressed by concerned person.

    Email: bitsy@bitdefender.com

    Support form: https://www.bitdefender.com/support/contact-us.html?last_page=ConsumerCategory


    If you find my response helpful, please mark it as accepted / agree.


    Thanks and regards,

  • Unfortunately, after creating and saving a post that took me over an hour to compose and edit, it is nowhere to be found !

    I'm too tired and frustrated to continue right now, but I did have a Support Chat Session yesterday and it yielded nothing that would help, that included checking the quarantine and notifications.

    Thank you for trying !

  • Flexx
    Flexx DEFENDER OF THE YEAR 2023 / DEFENDER OF THE MONTH ✭✭✭✭✭ mod

    @JosephJ

    Sorry for the inconvenience caused to you.

    Kindly have a look at below image, which somewhat resembles your issue.



    Additionally, it is not only with bitdefender, it is with every AV vendors. If the malicious files are not disinfectable they are directly deleted & placed under quarantine. And as per your above reply I can assume that your files are not available in the quarantine also (which is weird)

    But there are chances that your files can still be recovered (hit & trial method) on the same directory by using data recovery software.

    You can use free data recovery software from any of the below vendors

    https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva

    https://7datarecovery.com/

    https://recoverit.wondershare.com/data-recovery-free.html

    If you want, you can go forward and try these software in order to get back your files, but recovery is not always guaranteed.


    If this helps, kindly mark answer as agree/ accepted

    Regards

    Flex

    (Bitdefender beta tester 2019/ 2020)

    Life happens, Coffee helps!

    Show your Attitude, when you reach that Altitude!

    Bitdefender Ultimate Security Plus (user)

  • JosephJ
    JosephJ
    edited June 2020

    Sorry, USER DATA SHOULD NEVER BE DELETED without permission !

    In this case my data was anywhere from 8 to possibly as much as 20 years old and have NEVER caused any issue, they were of personal and business importance !

    The email account there were in has not been used in 9 years and I have had numerous AV vendors in those intervening years, Including Norton and Malwarebytes.

    I have NEVER experienced any negative effects from having these emails on my system for at least 9 years (and probably much longer).

    My files are NOT in quarantine and it's next to impossible to find out EXACTLY what paths and files have been impacted by this since the window is not resizable, the full path and file name is not shown, you cannot do a copy/paste on the contents of the window, you can see, but not copy, the path and filename by hovering over each entry on the window, however you must manually record that information. I had 481 OLD files deleted and have been working on this since yesterday afternoon, it's now 10:30 in the morning and I've only completed the first 100 !

    I had written a much longer post that contained more detailed information, but after spending more than an hour composing, editing and saving it, it is now nowhere to be found !

    False positives do happen and that is why USER DATA SHOULD NEVER BE DELETED without informed consent !

    Thank you for trying to assist !

  • I have finished verifying exactly what was deleted and was able to close the windows and indeed at the very end was a button that would generate the LOG, but that is a day late and a dollar short to anyone who has had files deleted and is trying to recover from that catastrophe before completing the process.

    I am firmly convinced that these were ALL FALSE POSITIVES since every file deleted was over 9 years old and had NEVER caused any issues !

    The only good thing, if there can be a good thing in having to do two days of manual work, is that I have determined that I have backups I can restore to rebuild my files. Of course this must be done VERY carefully, but since it's all OLD data it's actually easier than it could have been !

    I expect to begin the process of restoration over the weekend.

    One final comment, The log window, once again, was protected and did not allow copying of the information found on it !

    There are way too many design and usability issues in this process !

  • In closing this, here is my summary.

    Windows that you cannot copy from in the middle of a process that does NOT generate a log file until the very end.

    The log screen itself is also protected from copying, but is the best organized to capture.

    This process needs to be revamped, it looks like it was designed by a 10 year old with no IT experience !