BitDefender question
October 7, 2020 1:11 PM Subscribe
I have BitDefender on my Mac. From time to time I click on its desktop icon and have it do a full-system scan. Sometimes, at the start of the process, I get a popup asking me to give the program full disk access, which I do not wish to do, so I just close the popup and proceed with the scan. Today, though...
... I'm getting a different popup, which is telling me to grant full disk access, and if I close the popup I have no way of proceeding with the scan. The only choices seem to be to go to System Preferences and grant its wish... not going to do that... or click on a link called "More details about granting full disk access", which I don't trust. Is there anything I can do so I can just run my scan? Thanks!
... I'm getting a different popup, which is telling me to grant full disk access, and if I close the popup I have no way of proceeding with the scan. The only choices seem to be to go to System Preferences and grant its wish... not going to do that... or click on a link called "More details about granting full disk access", which I don't trust. Is there anything I can do so I can just run my scan? Thanks!
macOS recently (maybe with 10.15?) changed their security protocols, and now anything accessing your disk has to ask for permission to do so. It's nothing specific to BitDefender; all software must do so now. But if you aren't comfortable granting it that access, that should tell you something... you were allowing it that access implicitly in the past. Are you not comfortable with that idea? Here's a link to Apple's support page explaining what each level of access allows: Change Privacy preferences on Mac
posted by bluloo at 1:58 PM on October 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by bluloo at 1:58 PM on October 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Thanks to both of you! Responding to k3ninho's first question, currently BitDefender has access to everything except Web Protection, which I don't have enabled because of earlier bad experiences with it on other computers (too many legitimate sites and apps being blocked, it was more of a nuisance than anything else.) Does anyone know if it's cut down on the false positives?
posted by Epixonti at 2:42 PM on October 7, 2020
posted by Epixonti at 2:42 PM on October 7, 2020
Best answer: Does anyone know if it's cut down on the false positives?
I use BitDefender (on my PC) and the Web Protection has been totally fine for me! Very few false positives and I've been using it for at least a year now.
posted by thebots at 2:49 PM on October 8, 2020
I use BitDefender (on my PC) and the Web Protection has been totally fine for me! Very few false positives and I've been using it for at least a year now.
posted by thebots at 2:49 PM on October 8, 2020
Response by poster: Thanks again to everyone! I bit the bullet and gave BD access to Web Protection. So far so good.
posted by Epixonti at 7:07 AM on October 11, 2020
posted by Epixonti at 7:07 AM on October 11, 2020
This thread is closed to new comments.
What was Bit Defender scanning before? How did it get access to those things?
If you grant access, would you be willing to finalise the scan at the end by removing its permission in System Settings?
posted by k3ninho at 1:28 PM on October 7, 2020