Bitdefender update forces removal of Spybot

[alternety]

Last night I noticed Bitdefender was offering an upgrade to their Internet 2016 from the version I had installed. SO I went for it.

Starting install it appears to start the uninstaller for Spybot. I went back to their website and see that they are requiring all other protection software to be removed. This seems completely unreasonable to me. And they now have left me hanging. The process wiped out my license for the version I had.

Does Spybot have any thing to say/suggest about this?

It certainly seems arrogant of Bitdefender, and quite anti-competitive.

[tashi]

Hello alternety,

Thank you for reporting I'll let the team know.

You can ask for your license to be resent: https://www.safer-networking.org/contact/resend-license/

Best regards.

[alternety]

Good. I am concerned with losing Spybot quarantined items. I will have to look into that. And I would really like to see Spybot and other vendors to slap Bitdefender up aside the head -really really hard. The arrogant bastards!

Bitdefender has become a real horror. I talked to their tech support. From India, nasty accent, using words that made no sense to me, irate he had told me this three times, never did understand what I was saying. And, to be fair, I could not figure out what the hell he was saying either. He emailed me the procedure (and links) for removing Bitdefender. First, I poked around in program files. It appears that 2016 was actually installed, but refuses to run until I uninstall all other security applications. This, it explains, is to keep bad things from happening to me. Can you spell BS. It is doing it to both 2016 and 2015. 2015 has been running with Spybot for at least a year.

I followed their instructions, including downloading an uninstaller, and ran it in administrator mode. The uninstaller seems to be in a loop; it runs than starts over. Then it created the now relatively rare BSOD.

Now, every time I reboot (I have had 3 power failures in the last 8 hours) it tries to get me to remove other protection applications. With the same crap uninstaller. I had specifically started Timefreeze to avoid this garbage, but the BSOD screwed that.

I am currently running without a firewall or antivirus. I really really hate this. It feels like I am running down main street naked. These people are risking causing great harm.

These people (Bitdefender) need to be stopped from doing this! They are requiring the removal of free and paid programs as a condition of use. One not declared in any pre-purchase condition of use information. It has got to be illegal somewhere.

Anyone have a good suggestion for a replacement for Bitdefender. I need to get protected!

[Aussy1979]

I have experienced similar problems before a work around that worked for me was to uninstall all conflicting software then install bitdefender 2016, THEN reinstall the other software you wish to run along side bitdefender. That usually bypasses their pickyness. So in this case i would try uninstalling spybot and installing bitdefender then reinstalling spybot once bitdefender is already installed. Bitdefender and some other security solutions wont install sometimes if you have other security solutions already installed, they say its to help reduce conflicting software like compatibility issues however i'm sure you will be okay using both.