Over the past month I have spent about two dozen hours (A lowball estimate) dealing with either the damage it has caused to my files or with their customer service support. To give a few highlights -It deleted or quarantined any files that creates a save file or edited anything outside it's own folder. This included Windows Voice Recorder, X-Split Gamecaster, and any steam game. -Deleted or corrupted four straight hours of modding to Fallout New Vegas, even though I made exemptions on all the folders and files relevant to modding. -Told me the only way to verify the integrity of the falsely flagged files (And to fix the errors for the future) was to send in the files for analysis. Spoiler: Their Method (would have taken literal hours) 1. Copy down the file path and name (You are not able to copy and paste this, so copying must be manual. You are also not allowed to view the entire file name unless your mouse is hovering over it. Alt-tabbing lets you keep the hover, but only until you type the first letter). Many of these files have dozens of letters, numbers, or symbols in their name that must be accurately copied, not including the file path. There is no other way to find the file after restoration than to manually search it. 2. Restore the file 3. Find the restored file and copy it into a special folder 4. Use their archive compiler and email it in (Archive com Spoiler: The actual method? Now, the method I discovered after spending nearly an hour with a customer chat representative, one that took about ten minutes? You can just open the quarantine folder and copy all those files directly. There is absolutely no need to restore the files, at all, or manually find them after restoration. Their archive compiler program didn't work, so I had to upload it through google docs. Took about an hour. I had around 80 files in there, total. Every single one was clean. And that's not counting files that were deleted or corrupted. Then, for the cream of the crop, I finally get a refund! Or at least, acceptance of my refund request. Now, I don't know if I payed for bitdefender with a prepaid card or a card linked to a bank account (One that I just don't have access to). So, I told them right away. Getting a customer support chat up, I am reassured there won't be any problem. Only to find they decided to send it to that unavailable account anyways. After dealing with the same representative for an hour, constantly telling him it is impossible for me to contact the bank and having him constantly telling me my solution is to call the bank, I am left with this
Antivirus is overrated. So long as you know what you're doing, for the MOST part, you should be fine without it. Just keep windows defender up and running, and dl Malwarebytes.
I haven't had a virus on my computer for 3 years. Probably because I don't download shit off the internet from websites that I don't trust, or publishers I don't trust. Also why go with bitdefender? Just the name by itself makes it sound like a shitty lowrate antivirus software that only exists to take money from idiots who think it will cure their computer.
