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Complaint: BitDefender Internet Security

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SectorSeven:
The ThreatFire article is nice indeed - although my preferred option would be to get one strong layer instead of several partial layers.

Although this thread started (and still is) as a complaint about BitDefender - I never felt I needed an extra layer - it provided a bullet proof protection for me in the years I have used it.

Whenever I wanted to check an extremely suspicious app, I sent it to VirusTotal - this was my external additional layer.

40hz:
I'm a little confused about your statements as well, 40hz. Threatfire is a heuristics-based product as it does not use signatures. Why do you use it if you dislike heuristics-based tools?
-Innuendo (September 22, 2009, 01:43 PM)
--- End quote ---

Sorry for the confusion. I should have qualified my earlier comment. I was actually referring to Avira's AHeAD heuristic mechanism, which generates far too many false positives as far as I'm concerned. The only time I could live with it on was if I set the 'sensitivity' so low that it hardly ever triggered.

Which brings us to ThreatFire. From my understanding, ThreatFire employs a hybrid approach. It does monitor behavior, but it also uses a signature database to identify and automatically lock out the most high risk threats. For lesser known threats, it offers you options for what to do. For anything truly odd that it has no information on, it issues a warning and a threat rating, and also presents you with options for next action.

I don't know if this signature check is what drastically cuts down on the number of false positives. But for whatever reason, ThreatFire does catch things that used to get through Avira. Prior to ThreatFire, I could usually count on at least one or two pieces of malware showing up on my machine after a few signature updates and a full system scan. So apparently the low setting on the heuristic scanner wasn't cutting it. But if I went and put AHeAD's setting on 'medium,' it would be constantly complaining about something. It was just too annoying after a while. Hence my mix & match approach.

Once I had ThreatFire, I put Avira's setting back down to low as a test. TF routinely caught things that were getting through. If I bopped Avira's setting back up to medium, Avira would then catch the same things TF did. But it would also return a pile of false positives that TF ignored. That's when I decided to disable Avira's heuristic and rely on TF for that layer of security.

Since I've adopted this mix & match approach, I've come up absolutely clean on every scan I've performed since.

So I guess the best answer is that I am currently using TF because it (despite all my biases  ;)) seems to work, and does so without annoying me. ;D

SectorSeven:
Hey 40hz - also sounds like Avira is not doing the job you hired it to do..... false positives... annoying.... low detection rate...
I admire you patience - I would have uninstalled it and write a complaint somewhere if I were you... :)

40hz:
Hey 40hz - also sounds like Avira is not doing the job you hired it to do..... false positives... annoying.... low detection rate...
I admire you patience - I would have uninstalled it and write a complaint somewhere if I were you... :)
-SectorSeven (September 22, 2009, 03:54 PM)
--- End quote ---

Nah. As a scanner and base level AV it's the best as far as I'm concerned. It's only the behavioral part that I felt needed more work. We've done some in-house testing (AVG, Avast, McAfee, Symantec, NOD32) and Avira always seems to do best overall.

I've also been told by one of the techs I work with that Avira has pretty much ironed out those problems with the latest edition. So when I get a chance, I'll probably disable TF and run with just Avira for a while and see if that works. Like you, I'm not too keen on having any more services running in the background than I absolutely need.

 :Thmbsup:

alinb:
Hi everybody,

I am a long time user of BitDefender security packages - AntiVirus and Firewall.
During the first few years, this product was my favorite among the competition.
It was fast, not hogging the computer, had a low number of false positives, not causing any problems, and the technical support was easily available and mostly helpful.

This last year, I believe will be the last year I am paying my yearly fee to BitDefender.
These are the main reasons:

1. It has become quite bloated with many different modules

2. Some modules cause Windows to crash when some applications are running (firewall + file sharing).

3. Technical support is now almost impossible to reach

4. When you finally get to tech support, you get a reply about 50% of the time, with a long delay.

5. The replies you receive from tech support, either tell you to download a new version (which was unaccessible at the time of trying) or to run a long sequence of debugging and "memory dump" to send to their technicians - as if I am paid to do QA on their products.

6. Searching their own forums for the same problem as I encountered, revealed many other people have it - they all get a personal "check your email" reply as an answer.

I am not sure yet which security package I will use next, and if it will be a free one or a paid one, but in my book, a paying customer needs to get access to customer service.

I hate to see BitDefender go down like this, but unless I can access a helpful tech support hand, and/or a stable product, I am out.

--
-SectorSeven (September 20, 2009, 07:36 AM)
--- End quote ---

Dude, your story is very different than mine. I have been using BitDefender for a long time but I think they're getting better with 2010; you didn't say which version you have, I'm using their 2010 now- they improved it a lot, it's scanning speed is amazing compared to 2009 and it also looks different; never had issuse with tech support- I only had some trojans they helped me get rid of  :) so..if you don't want to give it a try, search for reviews&tests on he net- they'll prove that you should.

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