Bitdefender Total Security

A newer version of Bitdefender Total Security is available.

• 4.0 stars

  "It's a great security suite if you install it properly."

  June 23, 2012  |   By nerdygeekph

  Pros

  Found a lot of viruses, trojans and stuff McAfee did not get. Cleaned all of them up as well. AutoPilot feature makes Total Security a lot better than competitors, whose products are usually nagware. Simple-to-use interface in basic mode. Firewall is great, with a Total Security skinned version of Bitdefender's Traffic Light software and the ability to block programs from the net without launching it first. Runs smoothly with okay boot-up and shut-down times. Makes me very sure than I can browse and open files safely with little problem. Stays true to its promise of silent security quite literally, with no alert sounds unlike old versions of avast! that kept me from sleep. You can find a great virus engine that operated stealthily in the background, sometimes I forgot it's running unless I see the icon. Great value for all the features you can get.

  Cons

  Lots of false positives in Intrusion Detection sector of the Firewall, mistaking the Tor browser as a potentially malicious process. Uses a lot a fairly huge amount of RAM. I configured a MyBitdefender program and it refused to complete my registration, always putting error messages about MyBitdefender in the Events pane. The free Traffic Light utility by BitDefender has a few more extras than the version in BitDefender Total Security. Scan times are slower than Norton by miliseconds - which is already noticeably to me. And, if you don't set up BitDefender properly, you could end up with the same issues the people who issued BitDefender 1-star reviews experience. You need to update often to keep Bitdefender awake.

  Summary

  BitDefender Total Security 2012 is THE best Total Security software around, but it definitely isn't perfect. Anti-rootkit cleanup is not best-in-class, there is no Mac version (though there is Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac, with the unique feature of scanning for Windows viruses so they won't get in your e-mails), it uses more RAM than I thought it would, and MyBitdefender takes time to set up. But, when everything is in place, all the hardship and shelled-out cash makes sense when everything bad is blocked from your computer. And Parental Control is a nice touch. But to prevent issues you have to update often, and if you don't use extra effort to make sure BitDefender is set up properly, the same issues that haunted some user reviewers might come to you. Though it is the best around, it isn't perfect. And, nothing is.

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1 reply to this review

• Reply by JCitizen on June 26, 2012

  The Tor browser IS potentially malicious! You can get pwned from a man in the middle attack from who knows which exit node. That was NOT a false positive. If your a geek and you know how to monitor SSL, you MIGHT get lucky and not get cracked. If you do NO online shopping or banking or checking your Social Security site; then knock yourself out.

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