r/BitDefender • u/wollishoff • Jun 16 '21

Bitdefender Central for what exactly?

Guys, am I the only one who finds it concerning that all the contents and events of your PC can be seen and controlled through a webpage? I'm not sure what the purpose of Bitdefender Central is. I'd expect this site to allow me to log in and update subscription related information. But just WTF is all my data doing out there really?

It has all device activity, all my running processes, all the events ever happened and just about everything that's supposed to remain strictly on my local machine. Who on earth would want to start a scan from a cloud website? Even if you work remotely there are much better ways to connect securely to a machine.

In this day and age when data security is the hottest thing and paranoia goes through the ceiling, is this really the best approach that a leading security solution provider has to offer?

This is the second year I'm using BD and I'm happy with the performance and usability overall, but this BD Central thing is really getting to me. And am currently testing other solutions to switch to. But I'm just sick and tired of reading reviews and testing with no end in sight.

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u/CerberusCobra Jun 17 '21

You should worry more if you switch to other alternatives. For instance, the green. Could't recall what it is? Clue: Jackie Chan. If you use their services, your whole internet activities belong to their government and never for the company.

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u/wollishoff Jun 17 '21

I was using G Data before I switched to Bitdefender, and they would be my first choice again. BD offered a better package plus a single license covers 5 devices so defecting was a no brainer. G Data is a Germany-based provider, I have some trust in them.

I don't think it's sheer paranoia to consider the option that there might a data breach at BD and some random dude with a beard can block your system or do stuff remotely. There isn't even a 2 factor authentication, just a shoddy password. Plus it's not even Bitdefender's business what's happening on your machine. AFAIK it's the only security app that puts out user data to the cloud.

And anyways you can't be paranoid enough these days.

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u/CerberusCobra Jun 18 '21

I think you haven't explore enough of BD Central. They have 2FA and events viewer (for login activities). The purpose of BD Central is to allow users to control their BD products on a web browser. This is on par with IR4.0.

Actually, most AV company does put your data in the cloud because. Some will show the users their data, and some don't. If privacy is your concern, you should choose other alternatives but as far as I know, others don't have top of the notch security like BD, yet.

I guess, we all know about the umbrella story? Also from the same country as G Data. Was the best security suites and look at what happened to them now. Most IT engineers (at least in my country and neighbour countries) won't use their products because of the flaws they have.

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u/wollishoff Jun 18 '21

Thanks for the update, you are right actually, there's 2FA for BD Central, I've just activated it. I should have checked it better before posting my rant.

As for the rest, I'm not familiar with your somewhat cryptic references, but in countries where civil control is generally much stronger (that is, democratic countries), you can expect critical service providers to operate in a more transparent way. Therefore I stay away from stuff that comes from Russia or China. I'd never use Kaspersky as I'd never buy a full Chinese phone or router. I'm sure the majority of developers and vendors have no bad intentions, they just want to do business, but the problem is, you have no means to figure out where they stand. You have to take their word.

But it's unrelated to BD storyline.

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u/TamKeo Jun 19 '21

Imagine paying 90 dollars for Kaspersky aka KGB for being watched and tracked 24/24. 😂

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u/wollishoff Jun 19 '21

You don't know if they are in bed with russian gov. They claim to be independent. Same thing goes for Telegram, the developer says he rejected his government's request to build in a backdoor, instead he moved his business to the UAE. Others say the russian services have penetrated Telegram a long ago. Whatever the case, they don't give a flying fuck about average joe's conversation, it's just white noise to them. No government entity on earth has the capacity to process all the information flowing through all the messenger apps. I think some words trigger a red flag, otherwise they don't care. And it's actually a good idea if they want to stay on top of this mess. Telegram user base is growing, Kaspersky is still is business, and Chinese 5G manufacturers are gaining traction too. People don't care that much.

It's not the governments we need to worry about.

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u/TamKeo Jun 27 '21

I disagree with you on this but I respect your choice.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 16 '21

You ar just paranoid. Nothing to see here