Is there any way to turn off "suspicious connection blocked" notifications

I am going to chime in just because I believe the more people that complain about the notifications issue, the more likely Bitdefender will give the people what they want.

I want a way to disable all the annoying pop-up notifications that tell me Zoom used my mic or webcam, that a "suspicious connection" was blocked, and that tell me to use this or that product - I paid for this product and don't appreciate the ads. I work in IT security and if I need to know something, I know where to look. What I don't need are four million pop-up notifications that persist until I click them away. Like some of the others in this thread, I will not be renewing my license if I don't have a way to control ALL notifications.

Yeah, sorry, I mean that there's no option currently in BitDefender.

I know this is not exactly what you are looking for, but for disabling the specific microphone/webcam notification, you can do that in the interface - Privacy - Video & Audio Protection - Notify when ...

Again, sorry for the inconvenience regarding the popups. We are aware that it is not something the users like and we are trying to improve this system. Unfortunately, I cannot give an exact timeline for which this will be solved, but I am hopeful that we will make it work soon.

I recently visited what turned out to be a very sketchy web site that immediately tried to install an unwanted program over 60 times. Bitdefender blocked this activity but then proceeded present a notification popup for (I assume) each one of the occurrences. The popup would stay for 10-20 seconds; then the next once would appear. Each popup stole focus when it was presented. Clearing Bitdefenders Notification log did no good; the log was cleared but the popups continued. So I rebooted.

Bitdefender's behavior provided no information that a user could act upon and the repeated stealing of focus caused major disruption of ongoing user activity. I find it hard to believe that Bitdefender designers see this as anything other than an irritation. It certainly shows they live in a different universe than I do.

After literal years of frustrated users, this problem persists. I'm working from a Hilton right now and none of "solutions" put forward by Bitdefender work at all. Every approach is just a waste of time, particularly because gratuitous changes to the UI mean that you have to search all over just to find the same buttons, only to find that they do no good whatsoever. Bitdefender just constantly spams messages saying how wonderful it is for blocking suspicious connections.

These are not informative messages that can be acted on in any way. They don't say which connections are suspicious or in what way. They don't explain how the user could protect themselves. (Well, if you dig in there is a bogus suggestion to turn on Bitdefender's VPN, but that doesn't solve the problem, and neither does using a third party VPN.) They are nothing but useless self-promotion: "Look! Bitdefender is doing something great for you!"

Is Bitdefender actually doing something useful? Doubtful, but even if it were, it is making the computer unusable, so it might as well just turn off the network connection entirely because as long as you are connected, your computer cannot be used.

The one thing that actually worked for me was what was suggested by SamRNSA over a year ago:

Bitdefender, please fix this bug.

Hi @Dean Hougen,

If the instructions from the article shared by @Flexx do not solve the issue, you can always get in touch with the Support engineers for advanced troubleshooting. Alternatively, you can temporarily disable the Encrypted web scan feature. Although it is not a recommended action, it will supress these notifications until their trigger is found.

I hope the information is helpful.

Regards

Of course, this is just a temporary workaround and not a proper way to disable such notifications. I understand that some of them are stealing focus and for this reason, the product teams are reviewing the pop-up mechanisms to improve the way they are displayed.

I don't believe that we are almost in 2024 and Bitdefender still don't get that people want Antivirus to work in background without no one even noticing it there.

And as a programmer, I really can't see why in the world we still don't have a global option to just disable absolute ALL popups.

The most annoying part is that those popups take the windows focus. Not only the user focus but the actual application focus. Cause even more issues if you are running anything in Fullscreen.

Two of the most annoying ones, this one about connection blocked, especially now with Microsoft edge new annoyance with the expired certificate, that literally pops every 5minutes. And no, adding exceptions to make it stop is not acceptable, if one will add exceptions to stop notification, better off not installing any antivirus.

And the other one about updates where it has to disable the antivirus module, so its popup an "Important update in background, blablabla, restart computer".... wtf....

And no, don't say it is possible to disable, because it is not. I have all notifications disabled, silent mode enabled, all update notifications disabled and yet still, from time to time I get that an important update is in progress.

Complete agreed with pokeefe0001, it is so damm annoying that it make me consider any other product on the market right now.

+1 vote to turn of the annoying "suspicious connection blocked". These messages take the focus away from my current application and interrupt what I am doing. This is *very* annoying. Please stop it or I will look for a better, less annoying product.

Thank you.

I have spent the better part of an hour trying to disable notifications a few times. It is really dumb that there isn't an option. When I am gaming it disconnects my controller then I have to use the mouse to click x and hopefully I do it quick enough to not cost my squad anything, or just die in general while I am trying to game. It's also very annoying that it pops up when I am watching something and I have to get to my mouse and click x when I am leaning back enjoying a movie or show. How can we not have an option by now to turn pop ups off?

Regarding:

"Keep in mind that, whenever a threat is detected, a pop-up notification will be displayed in the lower right corner of your screen and these notifications cannot be disabled in settings."

This is exactly what we - at least some of us - are asking to disable. We don't need nanny BitDefender telling us what a good job it's doing. We can look at the BitDefender Notifications tab if we're interested.

Stop making BitDefender irritatingly intrusive!

Hello,

Whenever something relevant to the security of your system or data happens, such notifications play a key role in raising awareness of the events happening on the device and send assurances that the product is operating as expected. Options may be provided to take further action, if needed. Being a security product by design, it does not have a toggle to disable security-related notifications completely, as this would defy the whole purpose of having an interactive antivirus that provides feedback and alerts the user of any potential threats or attacks coming their way.

Furthermore, having such a feature could pose a risk for the more inexperienced users and may lead to unwanted security events or vulnerabilities. Taking all possible risks into consideration, but also technical implications involving the whole architecture of the solution that would require significant modifications, the security researchers and developers have decided that the antivirus will not have a kill-switch for security-related notifications.

If, however, there is an unexpected and unnatural behaviour in the way the notifications are being displayed (and by this I mean a threat that is successively triggering a particular notification several times in a row), this is entirely a different story. The solution is not to disable the notifications entirely, but to find the root cause and see what threats are triggering the notification, to what extend and frequence, establish if there are any imminent dangers and address them and of course fix the unwanted behavior of the notification in the process.

If you are trying to disable a security notification instead of finding and resolving the trigger, it's like hiding the dirt under the rug or putting a sticker on your engine management light whenever it comes on.

I hope my explanations bring more clarity and insight and I am thankful for your understanding.

Regards,

Alex

This is not considered to be an issue, because the alerts were designed to work this way and there isn't an option to silence them completely. But there are ways to suppress them, for example you can enable the profiles:

When using the Game profile, all Bitdefender alerts and pop-ups are disabled.

Please understand that although a silent feature has been frequently requested by users, it cannot be implemented due to security concerns and because the antivirus needs to communicate with the user in the event of a possible threat.

Thanks

Know what's even more infuriating? After I uninstalled and did away with bitdefender because of this ongoing issue, no matter how many times i unsubscribe from this discussion it continues to email me every single reply 🤬

Alexandru_BD said:

Please understand that although a silent feature has been frequently requested by users, it cannot be implemented due to security concerns and because the antivirus needs to communicate with the user in the event of a possible threat.

BitDefender chooses to treat users like children that need their hands held. Some other security packages don't feel such need. And, if I understand what was stated earlier, BitdDefender apparently feels that gamers can forego such obsessive-compulsive nagging but people doing real work cannot. This makes no sense.

Yes, it would at least be informative if the notification said "Blocked Website xyz.com from attempted [brief indication of category of dodgy behaviour]." At the moment, as I recall, if you have several tabs open (or several browsers on the go!), and indeed several applications running, then the only way to find out is to open BD's main GUI and check the log there.

https://www.bitdefender.com/media/uploads/2017/07/suspicious-connection-blocked-bitdefender.png

If the notifications are going to be shown, then providing more pertinent information in the notifications would help the user quickly see whether to close a certain tab or to ignore/quickly dismiss the notification without bothering to waste even more time checking the log.

Technically there might be some complication if (say) application Firefox has loaded website xyz.com which in turn is running suspicious JavaScript hosted on abc.com. In that case, if possible, BD should preferably notify that the action is related to website xyz.com, because that will be most informative to most users. (Full details in the log.)

On the other hand, if (say) application AcmeTool has been compromised and is trying to connect to dodgy host abc.com, then it's probably more informative to most users to notify that the action is related to the AcmeTool application/executable. (Full details in the log.)

I notice some correspondents indicating confusion as to why gamers are given special dispensation, and mentioning that they aren't gamers themselves.

Maybe you could create a new profile (copy-and-paste of the Game profile), and call it, e.g., Power User profile or Focussed/Intensive Work profile. That might partly address some of the confusion and lack of adoption of the Game profile by people who aren't gaming.

Or change the name of the Game profile to Quiet profile, say?

Hello @DIVERSE,

The Game Profile was just an example of a workaround for this. The Work Profile will do the same thing, it will silence alerts and pop-ups. It's a convenient way to suppress such notifications, but again, this will not make the root cause go away. Remember that this is a temporary solution and it's important to address the underlying cause of the notifications. Suspicious connection blocked notifications are triggered by the Online Threat Prevention module, more precisely by its Encrypted web scan component. Bitdefender’s Online Threat Prevention module may alert you when you try to visit a secured website (HTTPS) with an invalid security certificate. It tends to be websites with lots of ads, such as news websites, and analytics companies with an expired certificate trying to establish a connection. Turning the Encrypted web scan feature off will also disable the associated notification, but obviously this is not a recommended action.

Such notifications were the subject of a detailed review back in 2023 and this is still ongoing. The developers have already made some adjustments to streamline this pop-up mechanism, especially because the pop-up can steal focus if a dangerous connection attempt happens continuously. For example, whenever the browser constantly connects/redirects to a dubious website that has certificate issues either through allowed notifications or toolbars/extensions. If it's constantly pushing to connect to a page that's considered dangerous, the detection may return a pop-up for each attempt and this is what has been addressed so far.

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 may be triggered for every dangerous connection attempt, which in some cases can happen continuously. To better explain the causes and provide fixes for this, the below guideline was made avaiable, so that users can address the issue and suppress this notification.

But if all we look for is an ON/OFF button to make the notification go away, this won't solve the actual problem...

Hi @pokeefe0001,

In my above comments I have indicated that both the Game and Work profiles may be useful in this scenario. A security software, especially an antivirus must be designed for both advanced users and less tech savvy users as well, to meet overall requirements.

Not communicating with the user whenever a possible threat is coming their way might put people at risk, and then what happens? They will perceive the antivirus didn't do its job properly, because it didn't notify them when needed.

I think we need to consider the bigger picture here. There are also less tech savvy users who rely on these notifications and can have peace of mind because they know their security solution will notify them when something's wrong. Not everyone can distinguish a fake website from a real one and not all of us are experts. Not communicating security alerts may also create the perception that the software isn't working properly, or that it isn't doing anything at all. So, then you will have the other category of users who wish to stay informed knocking on your door asking why isn't the antivirus alerting them. You see where I'm getting here?

Hi @Alexandru_BD, I think you are just repeating some PR reply in this thread and not answering the question properly.

If you say I have indicated that both the Game and Work profiles may be useful in this scenario, tell people how to enable that profile 24 7.

People in this forum post aren't necessary "less tech savvy users", isn't it? We are 100% okay with that notification being on by default so "less tech savvy users can have peace of mind". But WHY not give an option for the "more tech savvy users" to have a toggle deep into the menus to turn some of the less important notification off. The "less tech savvy users" will probably not care about googling the option to turn notification off and that option will then be designed for the "more tech savvy users".

Don't tell me the designer cannot design a toggle that is very hard for "less tech savvy users" to find/toggle.

This issue has been ongoing for years since the update and personally, I have ditched bitdefender basically because of the notification issue. The only reason I see the bitdefender team not adding the toggle isn't because of security but stubbornness/laziness of design team.

I have noticed that recently there is an improvement. Maybe Bitdefender were indeed (slowly) working to address the concern about multiple pop-up messages voiced by quite a few users here.

Now the first notification shows up more-or-less as before, but subsequent messages are bundled together into a single popup saying something like "there are multiple notifications".

Yes @DIVERSE that's one of the key improvements when it comes to these notifications. Obviously they couldn't remove them altogether, but I think this is a rather elegant solution to the problem. 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. So now these are basically bundled together in a single pop-up, like it's displayed in your screenshot.

I have brought this into the attention of our developers and provided countless detailed examples from the community at that time, and I know this change has been implemented for a while, perhaps you noticed it recently? 😄

Cheers

Not exactly that I just noticed it, but it's true that I hadn't mentioned it in the forum. On the other hand, nobody had mentioned it in this thread, so I figured that an update was warranted :-p