BitDefender Free has been discontinued

I just got an email from BitDefender (I personally use their antivirus) stating the following (at 10:01 PM tonight), verbatim:

> Dear [redacted],

> The decision to discontinue a product is never easy.

> It’s especially hard with a product as popular as our Free Edition has been in recent years.

> Since early 2020, we have had to weather immense changes in our industry; changes that upended many of our cherished plans for product development.

> Sadly, Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition has been a casualty of those changes.

> As of 1st of January 2022, Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition will officially be discontinued and no longer available for use.

> As a Free Edition user, how does this affect you, and how should you prepare?

> We will continue to offer tech support for our Free Edition until 30st of June 2022. We hope this gives you time to choose and install an alternative solution that will keep your devices protected.

Thought I'd be a good Samaritan and share the news on here, for anyone who isn't subscribed to the newsletter. Good luck in finding a new antivirus!

As the OP, I personally found BitDefender to have the best Privacy Policy I could hope for in an anti-virus (according to ToSDR, anyway). It's one of the reasons why I've avoided Avast. BitDefender just stays in the background, doesn't nag you about buying things, and doesn't surreptitiously collect data in the background.

If I used Windows I would consider paying for BitDefender, but honestly with my setup I only use Windows for educational software. I wonder what the next best antivirus is ...?

cmeacham98 · 4 years ago

If you're not willing to pay, I seriously recommend the built in Windows Defender (assuming you are using win10/11). It's as good or better than every free alternative I've tried, and it comes with the OS - all you need to do to use it is nothing - just _don't_ install another AV.

technion · 4 years ago

This is my standard time to paste it: Most of the enterprise configuration options in Defender can be put in place on a standalone desktop by opening gpedit.msc. You can configure exclusion paths for node_modules. You can configure sensitivity ("cloud protection level"), you can configure "Block at first site", you can configure "Potentially unwanted software" detection. Which you may choose to disable, but is absolutely brilliant for family members downloading "questionable" software.

The Attack Surface Reduction rules can be put in place here even for people who disable realtime scans or use alternate AV products and provide significant, clear security benefits. The "block access to lsass.exe" option breaks mimikatz, procdump et al and is absolutely underrated for its capabilities. And free.

poopooracoocoo · 4 years ago

Isn't Windows Defender one of the worst performing AVs?

Saris · 4 years ago

Windows defender is perfectly adequate these days, and it's already there so might as well make use of it.

tinus_hn · 4 years ago

I wonder what the monetization plan was, with no ads, no upsell, no spying.

tentacleuno · 4 years ago

I assumed it was because they were using us, the Free users, as warning canaries for any viruses that might impact their paying customers, with their heuristic detection algorithms.