BitDefender IS 2013 Installation and Configuration Recommendations

I started exploring the BitDefender forum. While all antivirus forums usually have many posts about problems so I think one should discount many problems you see posted on forums unless you see a high frequency pattern of a problem, one did concerned me and it was a similar problem that caused me to quit using Norton even though I liked it otherwise.

Supposedly there is no way to make BitDefender always notifies you before it deletes a file. There are many posts, on its forum, about Bitdefender deleting important files without putting the files in quarantine and about Bitdefender not giving users any option to be notified always before deleting.

Is that true - there is no option in Bitdefender to require Bitdefender to notify always before deleting anything?

 

From what i have read in the past,the bitdefender support is quite poor too.
Over the years the monetary gain mentality has slowly become a priority for companies and the support for the end users has slumped to the bottom of the pile.
As long as they have taken your hard earned cash they simply are not interested in supporting users.

Companies with this kind of ethic deserve to go bust in my opinion.When you purchase a product i would expect a solid after sales service and not a grab the cash and hide mentality.

 

I believe what people are refering to is the following that is noted in multiple places by a large yellow exclaimation point in the user manual:

"For particular types of malware, disinfection is not possible because the detected file is entirely malicious. In such cases, the infected file is deleted from the disk."

There is also a comment about archives stating:

"Archives that contain only infected files are deleted automatically."

and

"For archives that contain both infected and clean files, Bitdefender will delete the infected files provided it can reconstruct the archives with clean files only. If archive recontruction is not possible, you will be alerted that no action can be taken so as to avoid losing clean files."

The above apply to the Bitdefender action of "Take proper actions."

For realtime scanning, the options displayed when malware is found are: Take proper actions, move files to quarantine, or deny access. I believe that the default setting is "take proper actions" and is the one most people change to "quarantine?"

However for on demand scans, the default system scan, and custom scans, you will be given a option list on what to do when malware is found. The options are; take proper actions, delete, or take no action. So I guess if you really want the file not deleted, you would select "take no action."

It also appears that the quarantine option is only available on realtime scanning. The reasoning I believe here is that Bitdefender expects that you will be relying on realtime scanning for your primary protection and doing the other manual scans only in rare cases?

Very confusing indeed.

 

I also get the hint that a lot of posters complaining about it are using pirated games/music/videos. Sp maybe it detects them as full malware or something and those people are upset. But only a guess on my part.

 

Yes, that is correct.

I am under the impression that if you go to Antivirus Settings > Shield > Modify > Actions and select "Move Files to Quarantine" that it will become the default action for not only real-time scanning/protection, but for ALL types of scanning (i.e. - on-demand, scheduled, etc.)

BUT....I'm not totally sure about that. Like you said...

 

According to the manual, that would only apply to realtime scanning.

However in the malware removal section of the manual it is stated that if Bitdefender finds malware and "blocks it" whatever that means or you scanned your computer and malware was found, you are supposed to do a manual update of definitions and then run a System scan. One of the options shown there is "quarantine" along with "disinfect" or "delete." It further states that if the malware is in a Windows OS file, you are supposed to do nothing and contact Bitdefender support.

All this implies to me that the only time your going to get a malware alert from Bitdefender in any scan mode is when it can't remove the malware at that point. You should ignore any alert at that time and do the above unless your sure the file is non-critical and recoverable in which case you can quarantine or delete it at that point?

I can now see why Bitdefender gets such high lab test scores. They run it in autopilot mode and Bitdefender just deletes any infected file it finds.

 

Why would that give it higher detection rates? You mean the detection rate is overstated from what it actually is?

 

I was being sarchastic.

It appears to me that recent AV lab tests have downplayed the issue of the effectiveness of product disinfection over outright deletion in their test scores. Recent emphasis has been on zero day blocking and the like over the "nuts and bolts" features of AVs.