Annoying and persistent Bitdefender’s pop-up window

tk3000 · 2022-05-02T07:00:23+00:00

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Using Bitdefender sofware suite in Windows 8.1. Very often (every 5 min) I receive an alert via a pop-up window indicating a suspicious connection blocked. The URL is the following: cs.ffbtas.com. Bitdefender seems to classify the potential threat as critical. I assume some application in my system is trying to access the url cs.ffbtas.com. At first, it seems to innocuous but I could not find much info on the aforementioned url. Any insight would be welcome.

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Alexandru_BD

Hello @tk3000,

This situation is caused by the fact that the website in the notification has an expired certificate.

If you do not visit the website and you still receive these notifications, then your browser connects to it either through allowed notifications or toolbars/extensions. I suggest that you clear the cache & cookies, remove any unused/unknown extensions and if the issues persist, reset your browser. You can find these steps here:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/2574/

Alternatively, you can add an exception for the website in Bitdefender - Protection - Online Threat Prevention - Manage Exceptions, or, from the same area (Online Threat Prevention) - disable the Encrypted Web Scan feature which scans for the certificates of websites (not a recommended action).

Let us know if the information was helpful.

Best regards.

Wildon

Suggestion:

How about a setting to Block Silently for this type of protection?

The block info can still be present in the notification history so a user could allow the site(s) if they wish.

Alexandru_BD

Hello @Wildon and welcome to the Community!

Thank you for your suggestion. It has been noted and I will pass it to our development teams for further analysis.

There is an ongoing review process for the notifications and our developers are looking for ways to streamline the pop-up messages and warnings, especially the ones that are stealing focus, to further improve the manner in which the product communicates with the user.

Best regards

dhirschfeld

I agree. PLEASE just block things without constantly notifying me. Sometimes, I'm getting a notification every 20 to 30 seconds repeatedly. I love bitdefender, except for this. It's so annoying, that I've considered replacing with a different Antivirus just to get rid of these messages.

Alexandru_BD

Hello @dhirschfeld,

We are making progress with this type of notifications and a proposal to implement a throttling mechanism specific for these type of pop-ups from encrypted web scan has been recently pushed forward by the product managers.

It is essential to continue to log events for each incident, but limit the amount of pop-ups that get displayed, regardless of what's being blocked. The actual problem, as reported by many users, is that these notifications interrupt user activity and steal focus by being too frequent, since a pop up is triggered for every dangerous connection attempt, which can happen continuously.

I have brought this into the attention of our developers and provided countless detailed examples from the community. This is now being addressed with high priority and I trust they will find a suitable solution in a timely manner.

Thank you for your understanding.

Regards

Gjoksi

@Alexandru_BD

On the same matter, i've just found that other anti-virus product has "Do Not Disturb" mode.

When that mode is enabled:

it stops all alerts from specified apps when they are running in full screen
it stops all ... (product's name) pop-ups and warnings while running apps in full screen

But, in my opinion, it doesn't have to be limited to only when running apps in full screen.

The user should decide which alerts, pop-ups and warnings should be showed in the lower right corner of the screen.

Also, the user should decide when those alerts, pop-ups and warnings should be silenced: only when specified apps are running in full screen (for example when gaming) or in every case, while running the pc/laptop.

Regards.

Alexandru_BD

Hi @Gjoksi,

That's a valuable insight 🙂

I have passed the information to the product development teams, this could be very helpful in their assessment and implementation process.

Thank you.

vbfhg rh

How long does Bitdefender expect customers to wait until this ridiculous malware-like pop up behavior is fixed?

Dozeman

Hey there -

We use Bitdefender and see those messages in our log file, but never get the popups you describe.

Try this:

1) Open Bitdefender

2) Go to Settings

3) Under the "General" tab, turn off "Recommendation Notifications" and "Special Offers"

That's the only place I can see any options for turning off notifications.