Way to make BitDefender stop re-installing VPN every update?

SeanSkiVT

Hi There,

BitDefender Total Security is doing something absolutely infuriating that has been driving me nuts for the past month or so.

I have a subscription for Total Security that I use to protect my laptop as well as my wife's, father's, and mother-n-law's. Each of us is experiencing the same issue issue where BitDefender reinstalls the VPN product EVERY SINGLE TIME that it updates. None of us use the VPN, none of us plan to, and we all keep uninstalling it every time to no avail.

Support was pretty useless, telling me to uninstall and reinstall BitDefender, which did absolutely nothing.

Has anyone discovered a way to make the uninstallation stick? A refusal to respect a user's decision not to use one of their add-on product would be very customer-hostile, so I'm hoping that there's a setting in Total Security that I'm just missing that will make this stop happening.

Any help that you can provide would be appreciated.

Thanks,

-Sean

Alex_A

Most likely you will have to put up with the fact that Bitdefender VPN is present on your device so that you do not have to constantly delete it. The only suggestion is to disable the automatic start of the Bitdefender VPN service at system startup

Birk

Sadly there seems to be a lot of stupid things about Total Security. It autodownloads Safepay as well. The most annoying thing for me is the notifications about features I will never use. Kinda ironic that one of those "features" is Antispam.

rabollinger

Me too. If left running, the VPN pops up unhelpfully any time there is an interruption in the network. It seems to have no useful settings to limit its application.😡

CardinalFang

The Bitdefender VPN keeping installing is really annoying. I use a VPN because I rely on a public wi-fi for a lot of my work during the day. Bitdefender VPN stops so many things from working (including preventing me from sending emails in Mozilla Thunderbird) that I switched to NordVPN, which seems to work great. I've repeatedly uninstalled Bitdefender VPN, but when it gets reinstalled without my permission, it prevents my other VPN from working. Tried talking to customer support about the VPN issues and they've been about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Not been able to find any setting to say "no I don't want this, now leave me alone".

I've been a loyal customer of Bitdefender Total Security for a number of years. Will not be renewing my subscription when it expires. Too many issues with it now (my firewall stops working about once every 6 weeks or so. The only way to get it back is to entirely uninstall BD, clean the registry entries, then reinstall from scratch. Don't see why I should pay money to BD for basically having to rely on the inbuilt Windows firewall. Tech support no help for that either).

Anyway this seems to work for me

Uninstall Bitdefender VPN.

Go to Start, and search for "Services" and open it up. Scroll down to Bitdefender VPN. If it's marked as running, right click on it and press "Stop". Now right click on it again. Click on "Properties". In the startup drop down box, change it from "Automatic" to "Disabled". Click okay. This prevents the service from automatically starting even if it gets reinstalled again.

Now open up the main Bitdefender interface. Click on Vulnerabilities. Click on the Settings tab. Turn off "Wi-Fi Security Advisor". This stops those nagging popups

Morpheous

Thanks for the GREAT comment. You the MAN !!

B1rd

Its August now and I guess this is the only solution? This will be my last year as bitdefender customer. It were 5+ wonderful years, but its time to move on to a real security company. Installing unwanted software without consent is another word for malware. And that is something I want to be protected from.

Atreides

Same position as above - viewing this product as bloatware / malware with this unconsented VPN installation. The idea I have to keep uninstalling it is absurd. What is wrong with the product manager to think this is okay?

Alexio454

I was a very supporting client of bitdefender but this is not acceptable from a security software.

They are aggressively pushing their VPN service by reinstalling the vpn program without the users consent.

Support was not helpful and tried to cover it as a "known issue" that they are working on but we can all see that its a shady marketing decision.

Same with making you uninstall malwarebytes, even the free version that runs on demand. This is just forcefully taking out competition. Those two programs work fine together, i'm using both for the past 4 years and had zero problems.

My trust is lost in this company, when my subscription expires im looking for some better solution.

Alexio454

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/301247#Comment_301247

I just uninstalled it again but i don't see bitdefender vpn on services. Maybe they "fixed it" so you can not disable it anymore :S