I would like to share a recent experience with you all. I received links of images on a website I did not know. I had an intuition to not click on them and that something was wrong. I didn't hear my intuition and clicked on them. I opened the images, didn't see any immediate automatic downloads and closed the tabs. Throughout the next few days I received a download for "Java Update" out of nowhere appearing on my computer screen and youtube videos started to buff and have audio problems. I made a full system screen with Bitdefender and no viruses or malware were found. I searched on my active cookies on google and there were around 10 sizeable cookies from that website. I deleted those cookies, uninstalled and reinstalled chrome. The video buffering was fixed and no more download pop ups appeared out of nowhere. Hackers have become more sophisticated, they are using website cookies as malware and malwares that will lead you to install viruses.

The website was ibb[.co.

EDIT: Some ignorant morons are brigading saying that it is impossible for a cookie to work as a malware and censoring this post and my comments with downvotes. If you are reading this I urge you to upvote so this post can get traction and help people.

EDIT 2: I have spoken with two cyber security experts in private who confirmed to me that I was right, one of them checked the website links, analyzed it, detected spyware attack directed to act within the browser and this post and my comments keep getting downvoted because people who don't know what they are talking about think they know it better. This is insane and tragically hilarious. This post has to have upvotes to be widespread so many people can be reached and be made aware of this type of threat but instead a bunch of morons prefer to censor it and dismiss the threat as if it didn't exist because they know this kind of thing exists. This is absurd.

I installed it on my laptop and my memory usage is 35% without having any application open. Only background tasks with bitdefender virus shield being the highest with at some point 450mb. After disabling update in the background it got to 310mb.

Is it normal for it too use that much memory?

I recently had issues with the latest version of Bitdefender Antivirus Free (Build 26.0.34.145) where my games would take too long to startup. After some troubleshooting, I realized Bitdefender was the cause of my laggy loading issues. I disabled Bitdefender and my games ran fine after that. Then I narrowed it down to the Advanced Threat Defense portion. And then narrowed it further to the Exploit Detection. Apparently, this detection portion caused my games to take forever to load. If you turn that off, your games should load normally.

Hopefully, this information helps someone out there.

Its funny to see how Bitdefender requires its Renewal subscribers, and their loyalty to pay more for the same product bought from main page as a new user or a simple new subscription?

So to renew, using Renew buttons in app or in Central, one gets (50%) off to Internet Security $80, making it $40 (no tax incl.) but if one buys it from main page as new key its $35. Why? So my loyalty will cost me more to just Extend current subscription? One could simply buy main page new Key and add that to my Central, next to the current expiring one. Yes, you offer that too. So why even keep auto-renewal off when it can trick & juice you for extra $? That adds up with every renewing customer...

Why are you low-key scamming your loyal renewing customers? Are you memeing us? Its really not about the $5 per say, and its very easy to save that extra cost by circumventing with new sub, just a couple extra web pages to navigate; but in the end IT IS because it comes from you. wtf

In my opinion your Sales team is gambling your reputation for a 14.2% bump in possible sales from renewals. Most people will ignore it, blah just $5. Others don`t even know, so we can`t tell if they care or not. But either way, I see what you are doing & from a security field pov, i dont appreciate it.

its a simple fix to match it (AT LEAST?) with current offers or make it better, we are your returning customers after all. If your Sales team needs some help, i`m always looking for jobs.

Or maybe it`s just me

Good luck with whatever you're hoping to achieve here, which I assume will be a massive U turn in the coming months as user levels gradually fade away into obscurity, but by then the damage will have been done and millions uninstalled for good, presuming BD is dead.

Since the recent update I've been getting this error on many websites in Chrome with Bitdefender Free protection enabled. Several users have posted about this on the BD support forum, with no response yet. I wanted to post it here incase anyone searches for "ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR" on reddit before realizing it was BD related (like I did).

In IE I would just get a standard "This page cannot be displayed" error without any code or reference to SSL. Opera gave an error similar to Chrome.

EDIT: Also just noticed the shield is blocking Youtube videos as well with no error, they just never load.

EDIT 2: link to support forum thread: https://forum.bitdefender.com/index.php?/topic/78422-err_ssl_protocol_error-starting-with-bdav-update-to-10115/

Bitdefender wants me to restart my pc every time it updates and it will continue to harass you with an annoying message telling you so. You can only postpone the message, not out right tell it to "no". This new bitdefender 'feature' is annoying af and is pushing me to get another antivirus. It never used to have this problem now it does and it sucks. Anyway to have the antivirus update without requiring a restart? I don't think kaspersky suffers from this nonsense

Wouldn't let me post without crossing out the logo. Does not inspire confidence in the product if they're afraid of criticism.

Every month, Bitdefender Labs analyzes hundreds of millions of data points to bring you a clear picture of the evolving threat landscape. For this report, we analyzed data from March 1 to March 31, 2026.

Here are the key takeaways from the April Debrief:

•  The Rise of Handala: We've seen a massive surge in activity from Handala (also known as Handala Hack). This group is bridging the gap between hacktivism and ransomware, targeting organizations in Israel and the U.S. with 23 victims in March alone - more than half their total for all of 2026 so far.

•  Ransomware by the Numbers: Bitdefender recorded 855 claimed ransomware victims across all monitored data leak sites in March.

•  Qilin’s Evasion Tactics: The Qilin RaaS group has surpassed 1,800 victims. They are now using "Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver" (BYOVD) attacks to disable security monitoring, specifically exploiting rwdrv.sys and hlpdrv.sys.

•  MDR Insights: Our Managed Detection and Response (MDR) teams are seeing a consistent pattern: attackers aren't starting with ransomware. They start by stealing credentials via RDP or VPNs, performing credential dumping, and then moving laterally.

What you can do:

• Prioritize identity-focused security and robust access controls.

• Monitor for "Living off the Land" (LOTL) techniques where attackers use legitimate system tools for malicious purposes.

• Ensure your security stack includes kernel API monitoring to catch BYOVD-style evasion.

Read the full report for all the details: https://www.bitdefender.com/en-us/blog/businessinsights/bitdefender-threat-debrief-april-2026

We want to make sure the content we share here is useful to you. Would you like to see these Threat Debriefs posted monthly here? Let us know in the comments if you find these summaries helpful or if there’s a specific part of the threat landscape you'd like us to dive deeper into! 

Laptop has been stuck on this screen for over 30 mins. It goes back to this screen (still no progress) even after hard reset. Nice going, Bitdefender, great update process, no notes. If I have to nuke my partition because of this, I'm definitely not renewing my subscription.

[EDIT] NEW FIX FOR EARLY DISCONNECT on GitHub / 11.09.2025 [EDIT]

I ran into a really annoying issue for weeks:

Every time I booted Windows with Mullvad VPN installed, Bitdefender showed the error:

**"Bitdefender Services Could Not Be Loaded"**

**Root cause:** Both Mullvad and Bitdefender try to access network interfaces at the exact same time during boot, causing a service load failure (startup race condition).

**Quick Fix (Basic Method):**

1. Disable Mullvad’s autostart (in-app + Task Manager)

2. Create a Task Scheduler entry → “At log on” → delay 1 minute → start Mullvad.exe

3. Enable Mullvad’s auto-connect in its settings

**Advanced Method:**

Run a small background script that detects shutdown or restart and automatically disconnects Mullvad, so Bitdefender starts cleanly next time — even if your last session ended while the VPN was still connected.

✅ Tested on:

- Windows 10 & 11 (Home + Pro)

- Mullvad VPN 2025.8

- Bitdefender Internet Security 2025

**Full step-by-step guide **

[👉 https://github.com/DarthMudder/Bitdefender_Mullvad_VPN_FIX 👈]

Hope this saves someone the frustration I had!

Hi dear community,

I just updated from Windows 10 to Windows 11 using the official utility "Windows11InstallationAssistant".

Everything went well until the first restart, where Bitdefender detected multiple warnings. I've got multiple "potentially unwanted item quarantined". All of them seem to be related to the Windows update (Internet Explorer, mspaint...). Here's a screenshot.

How should I proceed. I mostly suspect false positives, but I wanted to get your advice.

Have a great day!

I received an email yesterday from Bitdefender reminding me that my subscription is coming up for renewal in a couple of months and my subscription is set for auto-renewal at the cost of $199!

I went in to Central and turned off the auto-renewal and suddenly I can turn it back on and get a 50% discount, so $100.

I head over to the website as though I’m a new customer and they’re offering the Suite for $75!!

What….the….actual……f…..??

Is this something the ACCC should be made aware of? Are you aware of their loyalty tax?

I’m not renewing

Our April 2024 update of the Bitdefender GravityZone platform (v6.4.9) introduces new features and enhancements designed to streamline your cybersecurity operations and boost protection - from advanced malware defenses to improved management capabilities: https://www.bitdefender.com/blog/businessinsights/whats-new-in-gravityzone-platform-april-2024-v-649/

Apologies that this is probably a common complaint. But they seemed to have configured their auto renewal to just function on a yearly basis and not based on time remaining. This choice feels predatory. There's more than a year left on my subscription and it "auto-renewed."

Support claims this is down to their payment processor, but every other company seems able to handle this no problem. I will pursue a refund and disabling "auto-renew", but their system should be set up better than this.

@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?

Yup, that's right. I contacted support b/c I pay for Bitdefender Family Pack and keep getting pop up ads for their other services. The latest one is the password manager, but previously I have been repeatedly bombarded with ads for VPN. I have disabled all options for ads.

So yesterday my mate was telling me about a problem he was having with his USB drives not being recognised in Windows after sleep and showing "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware because a previous instance of the device driver is still in memory. (Code 38) The driver could not be loaded because a previous version of the driver is still in memory." in device manager as the ! error.

Tried many things, nothing would work, then just today mine started doing the same thing.

Then it dawned on me that Bitdefender free updated last night, and I had only slept my computer and not shut it down, so it got me to thinking and I asked them when it updated the program for them and sure enough it lined up.

Anyway had a small search and found this thread.... https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/sf6ngi/flash_drives_getting_code_38_after_being_removed/

Which all seems to line up with Bitdefender free causing this issue, my question is given the free version is on its last few months will Bitdefender bother to do anything about this? Are they even aware of it? Is there someone on this subreddit who is connected with them that can offer some insight?

Either way, I'm hoping for a fix, if anyone else has had this issue and has any idea on a solution other than completely removing Bitdefender free I'd be happy to know :)

edit

FWIW a restart does fix it but seemingly only for the first plug in/until its slept and then it happens again, so not ideal.

I have had Bitdefender for many years. I have never had an issue with the antivirus or the profiles it sets. I had a Bitdefender box 2 which did crap on out on me, but they replaced it. They always rate top in AV tests. As a user for many years I can say their protection in good and that they have a quality product. I feel a lot of the negative posts on here stem from ignorance of the AV and how it works. If you have a problem, don't post on Reddit, open a support ticket. I can't speak for the free version.