SafePay: i) Loading Website Pages after Account Closed & ii) Data Use & Clearance

I'm currently trialling BitDef Total Security, particularly interested in Safepay and very new to the products. So, my queries may be due to lack of familiarity, but here goes...

Last evening, using Chrome, I was about to purchase online & decided (too late) to loadup Safepay. (A new site, one that I'd not previously bookmarked in Safepay). I found I wasn't able to load the basket into the Safepay browser, but can understand why. However, after closing that shopping account & returning to other activities, every few minutes Safepay would automatically start & each time displayed a single page from the shopping site. I would then close the window & continue my work. However, this did not stop Safepay continuing to restart & to load a page every few minutes, interrupting my work.

I realised that the pages it loaded from the shopping account were from the product browsing that I'd been doing before deciding to purchase - ie search, category & individual product pages. Specifically, I noted that these were pages from activity prior to my loading Safepay - I find this quite concerning.

So, I investigated what settings I could, to see if there was something I'd missed in setting up the product - also looked online but could see nothing to explain the behaviour. I'd an idea that perhaps I needed to clear a cache or browsing data, but was unclear as to how Safepay was accessing the browsing history from Chrome & where it was storing the data it was using to load these pages. In the end I cleared all browsing data from Chrome - just in case. This did not stop Safepay. I made a brief note of the pages being loaded, and it did seem that they were in chronological order, altho' I cannot be certain.

As this activity continued (for over 30 minutes by now) I noticed that it was moving on to both order & account detail pages that I had opened after loading Safepay. These pages were displayed long enough for me to know which orders & where they were going. Again, as I'd been in Chrome at the time, I was concerned as I could see order personal info, & my account personal info, being displayed briefly before the shopping site reloaded the home page as the account was not signed-in. The data seems to have been in a 'black hole' that I am so far unable to access.

So, could someone explain:-

  • how does Safe pay work with respect to Chrome, particularly with reference to pages accessed prior to Safepay being loaded?
  • how did it read my browsing history after this had been cleared (or so I thought)? Is that something I can switch off?
  • where is Safepay storing this info, and what info is it storing? Personal details? Payment method data? Other financial data? Order info?
  • What happens to this data, eg is it shared within Bitdefender? How long is it stored?
  • How can I clear this data?

I'll be frank, I am curious & concerned about the data collection, use, storage & clearance. Specifically, I'm alarmed that I do not know about the data gathered when I was using Safepay to access my online bank account & to do other shopping. It felt very intrusive & to me seemed to be spy-like behaviour. Is it safe?

Comments

  • OK, I'm new here, but this sounds like a problem that I hope not to have!

    So where do we read or find any answers to all these questions????

  • Yup, I'd like to know too. Anyone able to address this problem?

    My suspicion is that I've found behaviour in this product that is akin to spy-ware. It appears that this company deliberately & covertly mine your personal data, without permission. Anyone want to prove me wrong??? I mean, surely it's not the Russians, is it?

    So, BItdefender & apparent data-thieves, I'm off to another product as I simply DO NOT trust you or your product.



    Tagged: safepay Chrome total security data protection