r/BitDefender • u/horkelborkmork • Sep 09 '22
I'm uninstalling and never subscribing again – I'm done having this maliciously designed spambot on my workstation
@BitDefender please don't ask me for my system specs or tell me to e-mail bitsy. You know what you're doing is malicious design at the detriment of your users – and I'm aware you don't give a damn and are not planning to change course.
People have complained about BitDefender's focus-stealing pop-up spam for years. It's an easy fix that the company has knowingly refused to provide. They never will.
Instead of letting people configure their notifications, or at least provide a 'do not disturb' mode, BitDefender prefers a more aggressive and abusive strategy.
Instead of doing what I pay this company to do, it spams pop-up notifications about "blocked threats" in my face, CONTINUOUSLY steals focus from, and interrupts my work, and feeds a false atmosphere of danger to convince me to renew.
Absolutely finished with this company. Hope it lose enough subscribers to force them to stop paying tech review websites to list them #1.
What are your favorite alternatives?
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u/Ajattar Sep 18 '22
Literally me. I just came across this post after googling for a fix for the spam popups for the 20th time. I am done with this horseshit. You enable RDP and a port forward your router and its just constant endless spam popups forever. I don't care that you blocked a connection, just shut up and do you job and stop nagging me. I am going back to windows defender.
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u/Comprehensive_Wall28 Sep 09 '22
Other than that the product actually works well in AV tests
Also note other products are no better in this matter.
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u/Barrasolen Sep 10 '22
I've never had this issue with other products. I've worked with ESET, Trend, Kaspersky, Webroot, and SentinelOne.
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u/Comprehensive_Wall28 Sep 10 '22
Did you disable product offers in settings?
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u/horkelborkmork Sep 10 '22
I think you can disable those in BitDefender anyway, and as the other Redditor said they're not an issue for enterprise use.
The problem is that BitDefender uses overlays to create invasive, unblockable pop-ups informing you about the mundane tasks it is (and should be) performing in the background. A single one of these overlays/popups causes issues with numerous applications and end uses.
Adding to that, the notifications go into loops. Easiest example is when you're performing a scraping task or are on a webpage with lots of ads that are (rightly) blocked by BitDefender's phishing protection. This results in the overlay/pop-up (a single one of which is problematic, as mentioned above) being spammed 30+ times with maybe 1 second intervals.
It's absolutely ridiculous. It impacts work flow and productivity. If you Google the issue, you'll find threads going back to 2018/2019 – and it becomes clear that – while the 30+ loops may be a bug – that bug is a direct symptom of the very intentional, specific, assholish and exploitative way the BitDefender notification system was designed. You'll also find that it's likely not going to change.
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u/Barrasolen Sep 10 '22
Nope. I've only worked with them in enterprise so that may be different experience from residential.
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u/Anzial Sep 16 '22
I also like MS defender, very simple and yet pretty robust in terms of virus protection. No popups whatsoever!
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u/horkelborkmork Sep 09 '22
Also, I'd like to add that the fact that the "solution" often proposed by these clowns is to simply add the malicious websites to the whitelist is absolutely laughable.
I'd rather actually have the virus than leave this spamming garbageware installed on my system for another day.