Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015 PCmag review

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Petrovic

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Malicious URL Blocking
Thanks to a real-time feed supplied by MRG-Effitas, I have access to a continually updated list of malicious URLs. I use these to check how each antivirus product handles extremely new threats. Does it block access to the URL, wipe out the downloaded malware, or just sit there doing nothing?

Bitdefender completely blocked access to 18 percent of the live malicious URLs I used for testing, but didn't wipe out any of the downloads that got through. It might well have caught those on launch, but that's not what this test measures. I've run two dozen products through this test so far, each with URLs no more than four hours old. The average protection rate is 33 percent, almost twice what Bitdefender managed. I'll be interested to see how Norton AntiVirus (2014) and Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus (2014) do when it's their turn for this test.

Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015 Malware Blocking Chart

Good Malware Blocking
I rely more and more on the independent labs for in-depth antivirus testing, but I always need to do my own hands-on testing, to get a feel for the product's protection. To start, I opened a folder containing my just-gathered new set of malware samples. Bitdefender quickly and quietly wiped out 83 percent of those samples.

Next I launched the remaining samples and noted the antivirus's reaction. It completely missed several, ending up with an overall detection rate of 86 percent and an overall score of 8.4 points. Kaspersky, the only other product tested with this exact same sample collection, earned 7.9 points.

You'll notice in the chart below that many products earned a better score than Bitdefender when tested with my previous collection of malware samples. Because that was a different collection, the results aren't apples-to-apples. And when my results don't entirely jibe with results from the big labs, I tend to believe the labs.

Judging from the results of my antiphishing test, Bitdefender does a really good job of spotting phishing sites. For this test I use newly reported sites that are suspected of being fraudulent, but not yet verified. Norton does a consistently good job of detecting phish, so I report results in relation to Norton's detection of the exact same URLs. Out of products tested recently, 90 percent scored worse than Norton. With a detection rate 5 percentbetter than Norton's, Bitdefender is the current antiphishing champ.

Before putting Bitdefender and Kaspersky to the test, I converted all of my virtual machine test systems to Windows 8. I also enhanced the antiphishing test by including the built-in phishing protection supplied with Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome. In my day, I've seen many products that couldn't even beat the detection rate of Windows XP's antique Internet Explorer 8. Bitdefender beat Chrome by 10 points, Firefox by 24 points, and Internet Explorer 11 by a whopping 46 points. Impressive!

Almost a Suite
This product starts with antivirus that beats almost all the competition in independent lab tests. It owns the top score in my own antiphishing test. On top of that, it offers significant tools for protecting your privacy and enhancing performance. It's not literally a full security suite, but it comes close.

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