Bitdefender Antivirus Free - English GUI

Did you guys let Bitdefender photon take effect?

 

In my experience with Bitdefender its photon feature doesnt reduce the RAM usage that much, but system performance becomes quite good with time.

Personally I dont care about RAM usage, after all unused memory is wasted memory.

 

I suppose I'm in the same camp up to a point. Although IMO it's lamentable that free AV's are increasingly a thing of the past for now without having some of that memory
chewed up by a gimmicky password manager, a crappy VPN that can't stream movies without wanting to stab your monitor with a pair of scissors because of all the buffering, and a risky system optimizer that could eventually end up bricking your system.

 

All the things you name (password manager, vpn, system optimizer etc) made me think about Avira free Security , but not in Bitdefender free (all locked)

 

I'd have to give that serious consideration if I decided to break from WD (in tandem with MBAM Premium). And I'll concede the switch is tempting.
@Moose World previously posted that Bitdefender could be run with MBAM simultaneously. In spite of a few websites I checked out that "confirmed" this--- the end result would probably be counterproductive, euphemistically speaking.

 

04/18 EDIT: This is a technical report. The "whole lotta" and "whenever they feel like it" comments and the are my perhaps too casual observations; nefarious behavior is in no way implied. I do trust BD.

Well, after messing with the BD 2022 for about a month on my legacy i7-3770K/Z77 Win7 Home desktop, here's the allowed rule set as built over time in GlassWire. With 8 MB RAM and a Samsung SSD, I can't notice any slowdown vs my previous MS Security Essentials setup. (Also running MBAE and AppCheck Pro.)

Bitdefender Agent Launcher > Bitdefender Agent
and
Bitdefender Agent > bdservicehost
are persistent while everything else connects whenever they feel like it.

Whole lotta connectin' goin' on...

Cheers.

 

The real question is what is it sending?

 

One may ask that question of any AV. AVs connect in/out for sig updates, engine updates, et alia. I do not know of any way to view the exact content of what an AV is sending & receiving. Does anyone?

If I mistrust my AV, I dump it. Doesn't everyone?

Bit Def is a top-tier AV. I trust it. Thus, Bit Def it is one of the 3 AVs that I recommend to my family & friends.

 

And there it is... the preponderances of computer security.

 

Well it's probably apparent that if you don't trust your AV vendor, you should probably get a new one. They have total access to your machine...

Should also probably consider whether you trust your OS vendor, for the same reason.

 

This is an old report so i don't know if and to what degree is still relevant.
https://www.av-comparatives.org/data-transmission-in-internet-security-products/

 

The developer would enumerate bury that in the EULA during installation upon which one agrees via the "continue" button. BD has a "Privacy" link at the bottom of their pages which mirrors the EULA policy. As you relate above, it's a matter of trust.

For my location, most of the BD connections are hosted by Cloudflare; that's yet another vector deserving of trust. Not to mention, BD runs in Windows, as in Microsoft...

Everything is encrypted, so sniffing packets at the NIC wouldn't necessarily provide anything useful.

Yeah. A current test would be appreciated, but it looks like ALOT of work. No doubt, the results will be nothing we shouldn't already know. As Tinstaffl says, "They have total access to your machine..."

Despite being published in 2014, the report is still a good read. Thanks for posting it up.

 

2014 is 8 years ago, that are ages in computer time. i dont thinks its still valid in most parts.

what users need to understand, a lot of antivirus programs/suites include a web module, web inspector. so you can be sure that such data/uri are send to their servers.

in special for microsoft - this concern only microsoft product, not in general. means, IE, edge/msedge and any kind of those _from_microsoft_ -> windows smartscreen.

but the defender module has no web filter for other browsers, eg chrome/chromium, firefox and similar.

smartscreen works best with chrome, then msedge. i do not spy on addresses, but it can scan the result, means download and cache.

some did to expose the "hidden" telemetry data from windows 10 - they found nothing valid, only assumptive on very few bytes. anyhow sniffing makes only sense with another computer in the line.

if you install such third party crap, ofc, this can happen.

 

That is why I finally caved in to Microsoft's Windows Defender. Since they already "own" my OS, I may as well cut out an additional 3rd party security vendor, LOL!!!

It's really all about trust!

 

Agreed. Its better to possibly have one scamming you instead of two.

 

BitDefender Antivirus Free Edition 26.0.16.69
May 5, 2022

https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/bitdefender_free_edition.html

https://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/BitDefender-Free-Edition.shtml

 

I didn't know that Bitdefender Free was still alive. Does anyone like it, how is it performance wise when compared to Win Defender for example? The GUI looks good, too bad they require you to make an account.

https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/19/a...defender-launches-antivirus-free-for-windows/

 

It works very well for me. Very strong phishing and browser protection and is super light on resources. I think BD works much better than WD, I have it on two laptops. I believe the account is only required so they can keep up with how many devices you use it on, you can only have a total of 3 per email account. BD has not bothered me with any spam or upgrade offers and you can turn off upgrades in the settings of the gui. One thing I really like is I do not need any other extensions for security, BD handles it all very well, it passed both the Eicar virus test and the AMTSO phishing test perfectly. I do use Ublock origin on defaultt settings for ad blocking but that is it. BD works fine here, it has what I need without any other bloatware, cleaner/optimizer/wifi scanner etc modules.

Jimmy

 

Jimmy9190 well said, ... it works very well from day 1 when it came out in march. i'm still using it.

 

Bitdefender Total security ram usage :

 

Whoa really? How is it running for you? I know BD is a RAM hog.

 

I've made point about Microsoft and Google both multiple times. They already have all of your stuff. Not much you can do about it.

 

It feels light and fast, overal a smooth experience.

https://i.postimg.cc/s2rYV0ZC/BD-free-2022-Ram.jpg

 

I took xxJackxx' advice on this one. I experimented with different browsers and different AV's over the last few months and found that Chrome and BD Free work best for me. This combo is super fast and light on my system. Most all of the AV's whether free or paid do the same thing, which is protect you from malware. Some do a better job than others, some work slower than others, but in the end it is all the same. I just wanted something better than WD without all the extra modules and BD Free definitely delivers on that. It is also one of the very best AV's for malware protection. The only thing with any version of BD free or paid is to give it time when you first download it. It does use a lot of RAM to begin with but will settle down after the BD Photon learns your system.

I have started using Chrome again because according to everything I have read (and I read quite a lot) Chrome is updated faster than the other Chromium clones and has the best built-in security. I also have a Google Pixel phone, a Chromecast on my Samsung TV, I use Android Auto, Waze and Gmail. Google already knows everything it wants to know about me and I have learned there is no sense in worrying about that. I use BD because it did a very good job in any browser I tried and it works great with Chrome.

Jimmy

 

That is good to know Pat. I recently tried BD but not the free version. It used too much RAM imho. Not as bad as GData. That av it terrible with RAM consumption. I know it uses the BD engine as well as their own but they need to work on it.