Bitdefender Total Security

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Every security suite has antivirus protection at its core, but they differ wildly when they go beyond that simple protection. Some barely add enough features to merit being called a suite, while others boast more features than you can track. Some only protect PCs, while others extend protection to all popular platforms. The cross-platform Bitdefender Total Security builds on the impressive feature set of Editors’ Choice winner Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, and easily merits its own Editors’ Choice award as a feature-rich mega-suite. Note that when Bitdefender Internet Security reaches its end of life this year, Total Security will become the company's entry-level suite.

How Much Does Bitdefender Total Security Cost?

Bitdefender’s security suite product lines are switching to a simple two-tier pricing system this year. You can choose a five-license individual subscription or a 25-license family subscription. Choosing the family version unlocks Bitdefender’s parental control component.

An individual subscription for Total Security lists at $109.99 per year, the same price as Avira Prime. Norton 360 Deluxe runs a little more at the five-license level, $119.99, but that also gets you five no-limits VPN licenses and 50GB of hosted storage for online backups. With Bitdefender, removing VPN limits requires a separate subscription.

That same $119.99 subscription price lets you protect five devices with McAfee Total Protection. But if you’re going the McAfee route, you should really consider McAfee+. Yes, it’s $30 more, $149.99 per year, but that gets you unlimited licenses to protect your devices running Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and even ChromeOS.

While having unlimited licenses is a nice perk, few of us need more than the 25 licenses that come with a Bitdefender family subscription, which costs $10 less than McAfee+. F-Secure Internet Security used to match that $139.99 price for 25 licenses, but it has gone up to $154.99. As you can see, Bitdefender’s pricing is reasonably in line with the competition.

Getting Started With Bitdefender Total Security

As befits a product that spans many platforms, you activate your subscription by entering a code in the Bitdefender Central online console. Once the product appears in your console, you can install it on the system you're using, snap a QR code with your mobile device, or send an email with a link to install it on other devices. The installation link automatically downloads the appropriate installer for the active operating system.

This suite looks almost exactly like Bitdefender Antivirus Plus. Each app features a left-rail menu with icons for Dashboard, Protection, Privacy, and Utilities. The top of each main window reflects security status and offers recommendations from the AutoPilot component. And six user-configurable button panels offer quick access to your most-used features. Naturally, this top-of-the-heap suite includes everything found in the feature-rich standalone antivirus.

Below the AutoPilot banner, three buttons let you launch a quick scan, system scan, or vulnerability scan, and another two activate Safepay or the VPN. A sixth button lets you put the system optimizer, password manager, or file shredder on the main window in place of an existing button that you don’t use as much. This system of user-configurable “quick actions” made more sense in long-ago versions that offered many more choices.

As with the antivirus, a left-rail menu lets you open pages devoted to Protection, Privacy, and Utilities. In the antivirus, the Protection page displays panels devoted to Antivirus, Advanced Threat Defense, Online Threat Protection, Vulnerability, and Ransomware Remediation. Total Security adds Antispam, Cryptomining Protection, and Firewall.

The Privacy page in the antivirus includes Safepay, VPN, a trial of the SecurePass password manager, and Anti-Tracker. In this suite, you get the full password manager, not just a trial, and the collection expands to add video and audio protection, as well as parental control.

On the Utilities page, you find Anti-Theft, OneClick Optimizer, Profiles, and Data Protection. Only the latter two are present in the antivirus.

Shared Antivirus Features

Bitdefender currently holds perfect and near-perfect scores from three of the four independent antivirus testing labs that I follow. An antivirus can earn a maximum of 18 points from AV-Test Institute. Bitdefender managed 17.5, which merits the sobriquet Top Product. In the three tests I track from AV-Comparatives, Bitdefender earned two scores of Advanced+, the maximum possible rating, and one Advanced. And it aced two tough tests from London-based MRG-Effitas.

My algorithm that pulls together these disparate scores into a single aggregate rating naturally puts Bitdefender at an excellent 9.7 of 10 possible points. Also tested by three labs, ESET reached 9.9. The top lab scorer is Avast One, with 9.9 points based on results from all four labs. The only others with a four-lab sweep are Norton and Microsoft Defender Antivirus, each with a 9.5-point aggregate score.

In my hands-on malware protection test, Bitdefender didn’t fare as well, scoring 8.3 of 10 possible points. When my results don't match what the labs report, I defer to the labs. However, Bitdefender’s trend toward consistently lower scores in my hands-on tests is worrying.

I also evaluate how well each antivirus prevents downloading malware, using a feed of recent discoveries from MRG-Effitas. The antivirus gets full credit for each malware download it prevents, whether by blocking access to the malware-hosting site or by eliminating the malware during the download process.

When last tested, Bitdefender scored 100% protection. This time around its score only reached the current median, 92%. That means half the products scored higher in their own latest runs of this test. At the top, Avira, Guardio, Sophos Home Premium, and Trend Micro Internet Security reached 100%.

Phishing websites aim to fool na?ve web surfers into giving away their login credentials, which is a lot easier than writing malware to elude antivirus processes and steal those credentials. Along with four competitors, Bitdefender earned an excellent 99% detection score in my hands-on antiphishing test, but a cadre of others did even better. Norton Genie, designed to detect phishing, reached 100%, as did VPN-focused NordVPN Plus and Surfshark One. Avira, Guardio, McAfee, and Trend Micro also hit the 100% mark.

When I challenged the Network Threat Protection component to defend against real-world exploits generated by the CORE Impact penetration tool, it detected more of them than almost every other current product. Bitdefender’s ransomware-specific components defeated 11 of 12 real-world encrypting ransomware samples with zero help from the normal real-time antivirus.

Additional Features Shared With the Antivirus

Bitdefender's antivirus earns the Plus in its name by including a ton of features many companies would reserve for a full security suite. Much like ESET Internet Security’s Banking and Payment Protection system, Safepay protects your online financial transactions with heightened security. Isolated from other processes, it features a hardened browser and a virtual keyboard for added security. Bitdefender’s password manager works with Safepay, but it accepts no other add-ons. Past versions of Safepay watched for visits to financial sites and automatically offered protection, but that feature has been deemphasized. Just click to launch Safepay manually before you do any online banking.

Any time you’re surfing the web, advertisers and other snoops are tracking your activities. Your browser can send an official Do Not Track message, but the trackers are free to ignore it. Bitdefender’s Anti-tracker feature actively blocks ads and other trackers on the web pages you peruse. It displays the number of trackers from the current page on its browser toolbar button, with an option to fine-tune tracking and dig into details.

Bitdefender Antivirus also includes a full-scale virtual private network, or VPN, installed the first time you try to use it. However, out of the box, this feature is limited to 200MB of bandwidth per device per day, and it controls which VPN server you’ll connect with. A separate subscription of $69.99 per year or $6.99 per month lifts these restrictions.

Upgrading from this suite to Bitdefender Premium Security lifts the VPN restrictions, giving you full access to Bitdefender Premium VPN. You can also upgrade to Bitdefender Ultimate Security, which bundles Total Protection with Bitdefender Premium VPN, Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection, and Bitdefender’s identity theft remediation package.

A host of additional features come bundled with the basic antivirus. Its profile system can automatically configure settings to jibe with activities such as working or watching movies. You can scan the system for vulnerabilities, such as missing security patches or weak passwords. The File Shredder serves to permanently delete sensitive files, doing its job thoroughly enough to foil attempts at forensic recovery.

Sometimes malware gets its claws into Windows so badly that removing it is difficult. Many antivirus tools include a rescue disk that boots into a non-Windows environment, where the malware is defenseless. Bitdefender levels up that concept with its simple Rescue Environment. Just reboot and you’re in control.

In past years, the antivirus came with Bitdefender Wallet, a complete, if basic, password manager. Wallet has been retired from the antivirus and replaced by a three-month trial of the SecurePass Password Manager. Upgrading to Total Protection gives you full access to the password manager, which I’ll discuss next.

SecurePass Password Manager

For years, Bitdefender’s product line, starting with the basic antivirus, included Bitdefender Wallet, a very simple password manager. Until a few years ago, sentimentalists could still access Bitdefender Wallet, but the SecurePass password manager has now superseded Wallet. When I last reviewed Total Security it just offered a free trial of SecurePass, but in the current version, SecurePass is included.

SecurePass is available as a standalone product, costing $29.99 per year. It’s a complete change from Bitdefender’s previous password manager, which was visibly a licensed and rebranded version of SaferPass. Panda Dome Complete, ESET Smart Security Premium, and UltraAV have also relied on SaferPass technology for their password management.

Getting Started With Password Management

From the Bitdefender Central dashboard, you can install the password manager in Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari on your device. There are also links to grab the app from Google Play or Apple’s App Store. And you can send a link to install it on other devices.

The first time you launch the password manager, it has you log in to your Bitdefender account online and then create a separate strong master password. As part of this process, it generates a 24-character recovery key that you can use to access your account if you forget your master password. This recovery key is highly sensitive information—I suggest you print it off and store the printout in a fireproof lock box or some other secure location. If you save a PDF copy for printing, use Bitdefender’s File Shredder to securely delete the file once you’ve made that printed copy.

To get you started on your password journey, Bitdefender lets you import existing passwords or manually create your first saved account. The software can import passwords directly from Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. It also imports from a handful of competing products: 1Password, Bitwarden, Dashlane, KeePass, LastPass, RoboForm, and SaferPass.

When manually adding an account, you fill in the website URL, username, password, and a friendly name. There’s an option to check whether the password you entered has appeared in a breach. You can even configure it to provide one-time codes for multi-factor authentication a la Google Authenticator.

You can also protect your passwords (and your entire Bitdefender Central account) using multi-factor authentication. Once you’ve done so, logging in will require both the account password and the code returned by Google Authenticator or a work-alike authenticator app. There’s also an option to receive verification codes via email, but the app is a better solution.

Password Generator

You can invoke the password generator while editing or creating an account, or open it for full control by choosing it from the left-side menu. By default, it creates 16-character random passwords using all four character types: capital letters, small letters, digits, and punctuation. You can raise the length as high as 32 characters; we advise you to make it at least 20. After all, you don’t have to remember the generated passwords.

The SecurePass password generator has one very unusual feature—it lets you redefine the four character types. In theory, you could, say, add accented vowels to the capital and small letters, or refuse to use the digit 4 in any password. In practice, this will be useful for websites that put odd limitations on just what special characters are permitted.

Security Report

Getting all your passwords recorded in a password manager is an important step, but it’s not the only step. You still need to review those saved passwords to make sure they’re not stupid. Bitdefender’s security report identifies passwords you’ve used more than once, passwords found in data breaches, and what it calls weak passwords.

The previous password manager’s security scan called out “123456” as a weak password but accepted “Password1!” while the current version correctly flags that second one (and similar blunders) as weak. It’s an improvement, but I still prefer a password security report that lets you view all your accounts sorted by password strength so you can start fixing the worst ones and just keep going.

Password Capture and Replay

Typing in new account records manually is tedious. Most users will just log in as usual and rely on SecurePass to capture their credentials as they are entered. After you submit your credentials, SecurePass slides in a banner that lets you choose whether to save them. Credentials get saved with the URL as a title; you can dig into the password vault and change that to a friendly name if you wish.

I tested the password manager with a random bunch of secure sites, and it correctly captured all my logins, including two-part logins like Gmail and Yahoo. When you return to a site, the password manager fills in your credentials, so all you need to do is submit them.

In testing, I couldn’t get SecurePass to capture a second set of credentials for a site that already had one set stored. I had to create the second entry manually. My Bitdefender contacts confirm that this is working as designed, noting that “we do have plans to extend the capturing functionality to allow saving of multiple logins and updating the existing ones.”

If you’ve managed to save multiple credential sets, SecurePass offers a list when you revisit the site. Clicking the toolbar button brings up a search box for saved accounts, and clicking one of those accounts navigates to the site and fills in your username and password.

Identities and Credit Cards

It’s a short step from automatically filling in passwords to automatically filling in other personal data in web forms. SecurePass lets you save any number of identity entries with basic contact information. The amount of contact data is limited, though, and entry is awkward for US users. For starters, it breaks the address into Address, Country, and State/County, with no field for City or Zip.

I couldn’t get the phone number field to doesn’t accept the common ###-###-#### or (###)###-#### formats. It asked for international format, but the standard +# ### ### #### didn’t work. Eventually I turned to my Bitdefender contacts, who explained that the accepted format consists only of numbers and the initial plus sign, no spaces or other characters.

You can also save details for any number of credit cards, so you don’t have to dig out your wallet and laboriously type in the details when you shop online. I saved an identity and a credit card and then visited a form-filling test website.

SecurePass did nothing on the test site. It didn’t fill in the personal data or the credit card info. I clicked the browser extension button, but that didn’t help. My Bitdefender contact explained that, at present, SecurePass does not attempt to fill in personal data in forms. You can actively fill in a credit card by right-clicking the form and working through the menu. However, this feature didn’t work when I tried it.

Secure Your Accounts Remotely

You can install the password manager browser extension on all your desktop computers and add the app to all your mobile devices. That’s convenient, but there could be a security risk if one of your devices gets lost or stolen.

With the old SaferPass-based password manager, the Secure Me feature lets you view all devices with an active connection to the password manager and disconnect any that seem sketchy. On some platforms, Secure Me could even log out of sites that the password manager had logged into. With the current edition, you have just one option. Clicking the big Lock account button on the settings page signs you out of the password manager on all your devices.

Awkward Password and Group Sharing

Bitdefender’s new SecurePass component allows password sharing, which the old password manager lacked. To do so, open an account’s detail page in the password vault, click the three-dot menu at the right-hand side, and choose Share.

The resulting dialog box invites you to add a trusted user, meaning another user of SecurePass. By default, even your trusted users get read-only access to shared passwords. You can expand that to Write access, meaning they can make changes, or to Admin access, meaning they can control sharing. At first, I couldn’t make this feature work. Checking with my Bitdefender contacts, I learned that I should have clicked a plus-sign button again after entering the trusted user’s email. The Bitdefender team plans to clarify this process.

You click Sharing in the left-side menu to view and manage such shares. A numeric overlay on this menu item lets the recipient know how many new shares are pending.

If you need to share multiple account items with others, the Groups feature can help. You start by clicking Groups in the left-side menu and creating one or more groups. This is essential, as you can’t create a group on the fly. Now open each account item, click the three-dot menu, and choose Add to group.

Once you’ve loaded the group with goodies, you invite other SecurePass users to join the group. By default, new additions become group admins, but you can remove that status or expand it by giving the user sharing rights.

Password Management Changed, Not Seriously Improved

Many security suites include some form of password management, but few are as effective as the best standalone password managers. For example, Norton Password Manager is roughly on par with Bitdefender. Neither has advanced features like digital inheritance. Both flag weak and duplicate passwords to improve your security. The same is true of Trend Micro Password Manager. While all three of these password managers support some degree of form filling, this feature proved limited in all of them.

The SecurePass password manager comes at no cost beyond that of your Bitdefender Premium subscription, but you can do better without paying anything at all. Proton Pass, PCMag’s Editors’ Choice pick for free password management, does everything Bitdefender does, includes provisions for passing on your accounts to an heir in the event of your untimely death, and handles secure sharing of passwords better. If your budget can stretch to paying for password management, consider NordPass, also an Editors’ Choice pick.

Firewall Protection Without Fuss

All the features I’ve discussed thus far are present in Bitdefender Antivirus Plus in one form or another. Upgrading from an antivirus to its corresponding security suite often gets you firewall protection, and Bitdefender is no exception. As with many of Bitdefender’s security features, the firewall does its job with minimal fuss.

A typical personal firewall works in two ways, blocking attacks across the network and preventing misuse of the network connection by installed programs. Testing the former, I hit the firewall with some web-based attacks. It correctly stealthed all the test systems ports and warned me about a port scan attack. I should note that a typical PC on a home network is already protected by network address translation or NAT. It’s not even visible from the internet, so some of my testing requires special configuration to prevent NAT-based protection.

As noted, most firewalls also impose restrictions on how programs use your network connection. Out of the box, Bitdefender sets specific permissions for a wide range of known programs. Like Norton, it monitors unknowns to make sure they don’t misuse network traffic.

When personal firewalls were new, they relied on uninformed users to make important security decisions. Should SmertShpionam.exe connect with 87.242.66.56? Once or always? Users often made the wrong choice, leading to the current no-interaction style. If you’re a network expert, you can enable such popups by switching the firewall to Alert mode (formerly Paranoid mode). I turned it on to verify that it works, but most users should leave Alert Mode alone.

Exploit attacks use vulnerabilities in the operating system or common programs to compromise system security. Protecting against such attacks is often seen as the firewall’s responsibility, but with Bitdefender even the basic antivirus gets Network Threat Protection. In testing, this feature outperformed almost all the competition.

A malware attack only comes up against the firewall if it has already bypassed standard antivirus techniques. At that point, it might well try to disable any remaining security. To test Bitdefender’s defense against such an attack, I searched for a simple on/off switch in the Registry. Not surprisingly, I found no such switch.

I tried terminating Bitdefender’s dozen protective processes. “Access denied” was the response to all but one, and the surviving processes revived that one as soon as I killed it. So far, so good.

Nine important services keep Bitdefender running, so I attacked those next. For each, I tried to simply stop the service, then I tried setting its startup action to Disabled. I managed to stop one and disable another, but all the rest were protected against tampering, and the two vulnerable ones didn’t affect central security features. Even so, I’d like to see all the services protected against this type of attack. Overall, Bitdefender’s firewall proved tough and unobtrusive.

Spam Filter

Years ago, before the almost universal usage of web-based email, spam filtering was an important security suite component. Nowadays, most of us get spam filtered out by our email providers. Local antispam is only necessary if you rely on another type of provider, perhaps a long-standing ISP. As long as your email checks mail using the standard POP3 protocol and sends using SMTP, Bitdefender can help.

Along with your old email account, you very likely use an old email client. Bitdefender’s spam filter adds a toolbar in Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird that lets you fix errors (spam marked as valid or vice versa). You can also click to put a sender on the Friends (never blocked) or Spammers (always blocked) list. If you use a different email client, you’ll have to manage those lists yourself and create a rule to toss marked messages into the spam folder.

Spam filtering involves learning from mistakes. If you identify a message wrongly marked as spam or as valid, Bitdefender asks permission to analyze it in the cloud. I suggest configuring it to send missed spam messages for analysis but never send valid messages that were filed as spam, as the latter could contain sensitive information.

Where some antispam systems require many dozens of settings, Bitdefender needs only a few. I’ve mentioned the Friends and Spammers lists, and the options to send mismarked messages for analysis. You might consider setting it to block emails using Cyrillic or Asian character sets, assuming you never get legitimate mail using those character sets. That’s it for settings.

Preventing Video and Audio Snooping

You may think of spyware as malicious software that tries to steal secrets from your personal data. That’s true, but spying can spill over into real life. That webcam that you use for meetings and chats can be turned into a peephole for online pervs. And don’t think the camera light will give you a clue—peeping spyware can shut down that light.

Bitdefender’s webcam protection component aims to keep out the snoops. This simple tool limits webcam access to trusted programs, either programs like Skype that are already on its list or those you've approved. You get a warning when a new program tries to access the camera and an opportunity to block that attempt. Bitdefender also manages programs that wiretap you through the microphone.

For both the webcam and the mic, known-good programs that truly need video and audio access get a pass. You can also proactively add programs to the trusted list. Bitdefender's Mac antivirus doesn't offer this feature, which makes sense—neither does its standalone antivirus for Windows.

Parental Control in Family Subscription

Like spam filtering, parental control was once a typical bonus you’d get for upgrading from simple antivirus to a full security suite. And like spam filtering, parental control is less important at present. PCMag currently recommends that you stick with the parental control built into your operating system.

Parental control is built into Bitdefender Total Security and Bitdefender’s higher-tier suites, but only if you purchase the 25-device family subscription. Given that it’s built in, you might consider using it if you have a need. Note, though, that Bitdefender’s parental control system changed significantly in 2024, and not all the changes were positive.

As with most modern parental control software, you manage profiles for each child from the online console. This is also where you download the local parental control agent to each child’s devices, whether they run Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS devices. There’s no limit on the number of children or devices.

Setting Up Devices

Once logged into the Bitdefender Central console, you create a profile for each child. The profile includes your child's name, birth date, and an optional photo. Next, you identify the child's devices, installing the local app as needed. It's important to connect devices before working on settings because some settings rely on information gathered from those devices.

On a Windows device with Bitdefender installed, setup is a snap. Select Devices from the child's profile, choose the active device, select a user profile, and click Save. You can now install parental monitoring on a device without requiring the entire Bitdefender suite.

Mac installation is similar. From the Mac in question, log into Bitdefender Central, select the child's profile, choose devices from the three-dot menu, and click Add Device.

For parental control on an Android device, you download the parental app and log in to your account, then associate the device with a child profile. During installation, you must give it several high-end permissions, including Device Administrator, Usage Access, and VPN. Note that there’s no actual VPN functionality. Rather, the app uses VPN technology to filter content.

Installation on an iOS device is quite different. You still download the app, log in, associate the device with a child profile, and give it all requested permissions. But Bitdefender hands off much of its work to the parental control features built into iOS, requiring you to set up Apple Family Control. That process proved arduous enough that I simply skipped the iOS edition.

Child Profile Settings

From the dashboard, click a child to open that child’s configuration dashboard. Panels on the dashboard let you view and change the child’s device collection, view and limit time online, examine a chart of internet usage over time, and find the child’s location on a map. Other panels represent internet usage, device usage, and instances of blocked content access.

Near the top right you’ll find a link to quickly stop all internet access on all the child’s devices. Clicking a link titled More pulls down a configuration menu with six choices: Content filter, Daily internet time, Focus time, Bedtime, Family time, and Pin code. Setting a Pin code keeps your kids from disabling the parental control app.

Setting Limits for Your Kids

Bitdefender preconfigures content filtering based on the birth date you entered when adding the child’s profile. By choosing Content filtering from the menu, you can review and fine-tune its choices. For my imaginary 11-year-old the defaults allowed access to 25 categories and blocked 18. Among the blocked categories were Hacking, Porn, and Weapons.

The list is alphabetized, and you can filter to show only blocked or allowed categories. As a parent, you have the option to tweak the default settings, changing which categories are blocked or allowed. Do always leave Hacking blocked; otherwise, a smart teen could evade content filtering by using a secure anonymizing proxy.

Most kids aren’t actively looking for sex and drugs online, but sometimes an innocent search can lead to shocking content. Bitdefender can remove explicit results from search engines and quash harmful YouTube videos, but you must turn those features on to get their benefit.

Selecting Daily internet time from the menu lets you enable and configure limits for online time. For my test child, Bitdefender set a default 90-minute limit for each day of the week. You can click one or more days and change the limit, from 30 minutes to all day, in 30-minute increments. Limits apply across all devices, and when the time runs out, internet playtime is over.

The enhanced parental control component now includes a time-based reward system. A child who wants more time online can tap or click to request it. When you receive the request, you can grant a reward for good behavior with a click.

In addition to the overall daily cap on internet use, Bitdefender offers three other ways to control your children’s time online: Focus time, Bedtime, and Family time. Focus time is for homework and study, bedtime is for sleeping, and family time means kids should put down their devices and do something with the family.

An intricate system of daily settings lets you devote a span of time to one, two, or all three of these. I found the interface a bit confusing, with start and end times represented simply by numbers from 00:00 to 24:00. By configuring bedtime from 21:00 to 05:00, I think I set it to run from 9 p.m. one night to 5 a.m. the next morning. The system does identify times that are already in use, so you don’t accidentally schedule the same hour for homework and family time.

By default, internet access is banned during bedtime and family time but allowed during focus time, with the option to impose additional limitations on available content categories. The point is to give the child time online for serious pursuits such as homework and study. For reasons I can’t entirely fathom, you have the option to allow access during bedtime and family time, each with its own set of category limitations. Internet usage during focus time, bedtime, or family time doesn’t count against the daily cap.

Content Filtering Without Explanation

I tried opening various inappropriate websites on different platforms to test the content filter. It successfully blocked inappropriate pages, including secure HTTPS pages, in popular browsers and in a totally off-brand browser that I wrote myself. In previous tests, Bitdefender replaced blocked pages with a warning, “You are not allowed to visit this page.” Using the current system, both on Windows and macOS, I found no such warning, just an error message in the browser.

My Bitdefender contact confirmed that this is working as designed. The new filter works at the DNS level. On the one hand, that means it affects every internet-aware application with no loopholes. On the other, DNS-based filtering offers no opportunity to slip an explanatory warning page into the browser.

Checking back in the online dashboard, I found the blocked sites listed in the Prevented Content access panel. However, they were hard to find, buried in irrelevant fluff. As a parent, I don’t think I’d care that my child’s browser visited settings-win.data.microsoft.com 38 times. I’d be a lot more interested in just one or two visits to porn sites.

Extending my testing, I made a quick check of the safe search system. Holding the test system at arm’s length, I Googled several…unusual…sex acts that have innocent-sounding names. I didn’t observe any blocking by Bitdefender.

Child Location Features Diminished

Ask your kids to wear tracking devices, and you’ll get serious pushback. Give them phones, though, and it’s smooth sailing. With Bitdefender installed on those phones, you can log in online at any time to see a map with your child’s location.

In its previous version, this feature was much more powerful. You could define multiple Safe and Restricted areas, each with a diameter from 100 to 2,000 meters. For Safe areas, you could request a check-in on arrival. If the child wandered into a Restricted area, you’d get a warning.

That system of defined areas is no longer active. You can only view the current location of your child’s phone now.

Look Elsewhere for Parental Control

When you launch the parental control component, you get an overview of the enhancements it has received. I see these outweighed by negatives. Content filtering can no longer report why a site was blocked, for example. The location feature now just maps your child’s location, with no notifications about safe and dangerous areas. There’s no more phone contact management, and application control is limited. Yes, there’s a focus on children’s activities, but the distinction between focus time, family time, and bedtime just creates confusion. If you truly need parental control, first consider using what’s already available in your operating system. Failing that, have a look at the best dedicated parental control tools. next.

Cryptomining Protection

You dig in the ground if you’re seeking gold, but mining for cryptocurrency just requires a computer and a lot of computational power. Just as claim jumpers of old gained riches by stealing the work of others, cryptojacking attacks steal your computer’s CPU cycles to mine crypto.

As attacks go, this one’s relatively mild. Usually, an affected computer will just do its work more slowly. Some websites even clarify that you pay for their services by giving them cycles for mining, rather than suffering through advertisements. If you’d rather not subsidize crypto leeches, you can block all mining activities. If you want to reserve CPU power for your own mining, you can tell Bitdefender to keep you apprised of any external activity. I doubt many will use this feature.

Performance Optimization for Windows

Each Bitdefender product has a menu down the left that includes Protection, Privacy, and Utilities. Upgrading from the antivirus to this suite adds features on all three pages. In particular, the Utilities page adds OneClick Optimizer and Anti-Theft. Just click Optimize on that page to begin the process of improving your PC’s performance.

On my test system, the scan quickly found hundreds of items in the categories Disk Cleanup, Registry Cleanup, and Privacy Cleanup. As recommended, I clicked to view details in each category.

Disk Cleanup issues can include junk, temporary, and cache files. On my test system, the software found such files occupying more than a gigabyte of disk space. In the Registry Cleanup category, Bitdefender reported useless or erroneous entries of several types, including help files and shared DLLs. Privacy Cleanup refers to browser cache, cookies, and history. Specifically, it reported on Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera—but not Edge. That’s an odd oversight, given that Microsoft put the final nail in the Internet Explorer coffin back in 2023.

After reviewing what the scan found, I clicked the big blue Optimize button to remediate all the issues. On completion, the suite offered a detailed report in the form of a lengthy HTML document listing every single file and Registry change. Similar components in some suites let you preview the changes and exempt specific ones, while others let you roll back some or all of the changes afterward. Most users would have no idea what to look for among the hundreds of items, so Bitdefender doesn't bother with either preview or rollback, except insofar as it lets you exempt a whole category, such as Windows Junk Files or Chrome Cookies.

Anti-Theft for Windows

A desktop computer typically sits in your home or a locked office, tethered by various cables and power cords. Theft isn’t your biggest worry in that situation. However, modern laptops are so powerful that many individuals (and companies) skip the desktop altogether. It’s convenient to take your computer wherever you want, but for a thief, it’s convenient to take it, period.

You don't have to do anything special to enable anti-theft on a Windows laptop. To manage this feature, you log into Bitdefender Central and dig into the device you want to protect. In the Remote actions panel, you’ll find Anti-Theft, along with options to remotely scan for malware, run the optimizer, and check for vulnerabilities.

Buttons on the Anti-Theft page let you locate, lock, or wipe the device. A similar feature for Android devices adds the option to sound a loud alarm, which is handy for finding a device you’ve simply misplaced.

When your laptop connects via Wi-Fi, Bitdefender gets its location using Wi-Fi triangulation, which can be quite accurate. However, on an Ethernet connection, it falls back on IP address geolocation with much coarser accuracy. You'll be lucky if it gives you the right city. Fortunately, a stolen laptop will almost always connect via Wi-Fi.

If the thief stole your laptop while it was logged in to your account and managed to run off without letting it go into sleep mode, you could have a problem. No worries. Bitdefender can send a command to lock your user account remotely. Without your Administrator password, the thief can't touch your data. Be sure to use a strong password to protect your account.

Carrying around a laptop computer without password protection is foolish, but if you do, Bitdefender can still help. You can add a password during the lock process, and this will continue to be your login password.

In testing, the virtual machine responded instantly to the lock command. Selecting the wipe command triggered a warning that all data and apps on the lost computer would be erased. When I confirmed my intention, the test virtual machine immediately rebooted and started the data-wipe process. I had to recover from a saved snapshot to continue testing.

That's all for anti-theft, but it’s everything you need for a laptop. Yes, the option to sound an alarm is absent, but you're much more likely to lose an Android phone around the house than a laptop. You can locate and lock a lost or stolen laptop to prevent misuse. If it's hopelessly unrecoverable, you can send a remote command to wipe the device, keeping your data out of unfriendly hands.

Protection for macOS

Installing this cross-platform product on a Mac gives you a full installation of Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac, including the free, feature-limited version of the VPN product. The password manager and separate parental control app also work with Macs.

The independent antivirus labs that extend their testing to macOS give Bitdefender perfect scores, and it earned an excellent score in my hands-on phishing protection test. Bitdefender protects your files and backups against ransomware. The TrafficLight browser extension warns of dangerous links in search results.

Bitdefender Antivirus for Mac is an Editors' Choice in its field, sharing that honor with Norton 360 Deluxe for Mac. Please read my full review to learn all the details about Bitdefender's macOS product.

Total Protection for Android

To install Bitdefender Security on an Android device, you can snap a QR code from Bitdefender Central or email yourself a link. You can optionally download the separate Bitdefender Central mobile app and use it to install the mobile security app.

Initially, Bitdefender Security leads you through a lengthy series of important permissions and configuration actions. You need to give it Device Administrator status to enable anti-theft and more mundane permissions, such as access to your photos, media, and files.

Once you’ve worked through the numerous initial steps and cleared out any found malware, you’ll find a sparse and simple main screen with a security status icon in the middle and a menu of five icons at the bottom. The icons across the bottom represent Dashboard, Malware Scan, Web Protection, Scam Alert, and More, with the last item opening a menu of all features.

Malware Scan and Browser Protection

The malware scan at startup is quick, and you can relaunch it whenever you feel uneasy. Bitdefender also scans new apps as you install them. It doesn't go as far as Android apps from Norton and Trend Micro Maximum Security, which rate the apps you view right in the Play Store, but it won't let you install anything malicious.

While you have this page open, be sure to enable App Anomaly Detection. This feature expands Bitdefender’s scanning for malicious behaviors, with the aim of detecting zero-day attacks. In an unusual touch, the malware scanner page offers an extensive list of malware types it detects, including CoinMiner, Banker, and Obfuscated. You can tap any item for an explanation.

Bitdefender applies its powerful web protection to keep you safe from malicious and fraudulent sites, just as it does on Windows. By observation, it protects Chrome, Firefox, and Brave automatically. You can extend protection to an unusually broad selection of other browsers, including Dolphin, DuckDuckGo, and Yandex.

Perfect Android Lab Scores

I’m not equipped to test Android antivirus utilities by attacking them with real-world malware. Fortunately, three of the four antivirus labs I follow for Windows antivirus also perform tests on Android-centric protection. Like its Windows counterpart, the Android antivirus received top marks from all three.

AV-Test Institute rates Android antivirus tools on Protection, Performance, and Usability; Bitdefender received the maximum score in all three categories. AV-Comparatives and MRG-Effitas both rated Bitdefender’s protection as 100% effective. You can’t do better than these perfect scores.

Scam Alert and Account Privacy

The Scam Alert feature watches the links in incoming text messages and flags any suspicious ones. It also checks messaging apps (WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and Discord) for signs of shady links. When it detects trouble, it advises you to refrain from clicking the link, delete the message, and (if it’s not someone you recognize) block the sender.

Account Privacy is a mobile-specific feature that checks the email address associated with your Bitdefender account against known breaches and reports any hits. On my test device, it found a handful of breaches dating back a few years. The app advises you to change the account password and mark the warnings as solved. You can add other email accounts to check, but you can’t go snooping other people’s email for breaches. Bitdefender won’t scan until you enter a confirmation code emailed to the selected address.

Anti-Theft Features

It’s incredibly easy to lose your phone (or have it stolen). As soon as you install Bitdefender on your Android, open the Anti-Theft system and tap to enable its features. You’ll have to grant a few more permissions—enabling location tracking all the time is especially important. Be sure, also, to turn on the Snap Photo feature. Now, when someone tries to unlock your phone, Bitdefender will silently send you a picture of the perp. While you’re here, you can tap for a preview of the alert sound. Just warn anybody nearby; it’s loud.

From the Bitdefender Central online console, you can locate, lock, or wipe the device, as with Windows. You can also make it play that loud alert, which is handy if you've misplaced your phone.

Unusually Flexible App Lock

Nobody can access your phone when it's locked with a PIN or, even better, a biometric lock. However, someone who picks it up unlocked while you're not looking could dig into your private email or other data. App Lock lets you put additional security on Mail, Messages, Settings, or any other apps you wish. Just tap apps in the list to put them behind App Lock’s protective wall. Avast, ESET, and Trend Micro also offer a similar App Lock feature for Android.

With most security apps, App Lock is a simple toggle. Bitdefender gives you some unusual choices. By default, every time you open or switch to a locked app, it requires unlocking via PIN or fingerprint. You can set it to keep unlocked apps open until the screen goes off, but that defeats the purpose of this feature. More usefully, you can set it so apps stay unlocked for 30 seconds after exit, making it easy to come right back. Don’t want to mess with all that when you’re at home? You can configure it to stay unlocked when you’re on a Wi-Fi network that you’ve identified as trusted.

VPN Dual Personality

When you tap the More icon, you’ll see a VPN menu item. Unsurprisingly, tapping it opens the integrated VPN. However, you’ll also find a banner suggesting you try the dedicated VPN app. Indeed, the dedicated app is a big improvement over the simple on/off VPN integrated into the mobile security app. Don’t waste time on the built-in.

The VPN offers a kill switch to avoid accidentally sending unprotected data if the VPN connection drops, and it can filter out ads and trackers. The split-tunneling feature lets you move connections by less important apps or to less important websites outside the VPN’s protection, a smart move given the measly 200MB of bandwidth available per day. Given that limit, you probably don’t want to set it to use VPN protection every time you connect with public Wi-Fi—but the option is available. If you’re savvy about VPN protocols, you can force the app to use IKEv2, Wireguard, or OpenVPN (by default, it makes its own choice).

Upgrading to the premium-tier VPN removes the bandwidth cap and lets you choose your VPN server from a list of global choices. I’ll report on the no-limits VPN in my review of Bitdefender Premium Security, which includes it.

Bitdefender Central App

The Bitdefender Central app gives you all the abilities of the online console right on your phone. You can install it from the mobile app or vice versa. Using the Central app, you can monitor your other devices, invoke anti-theft features, manage parental control, and even trigger remote actions such as launching a malware scan, an update, or an optimization pass. Your Bitdefender notifications have their own orderly page as well.

A Comprehensive Android Suite

While it’s not the security extravaganza that Bitdefender offers on Windows, Bitdefender Total Security on Android is a comprehensive suite of security components. It includes antivirus, anti-theft, web protection, locking of sensitive apps, account privacy reporting, and more. The labs give it perfect marks.

Minimal Protection for iOS

Bitdefender's iOS app is a free product and is not technically part of Total Security. When you install protection on an iPhone or iPad, it doesn't use up one of your licenses unless you enable the Web Protection or Scam Alert feature. That's understandable because other than those, the iOS product just doesn't do a lot.

You can install protection on an iOS device by snapping a QR code, sending an email link from Bitdefender Central, or installing from the Bitdefender Central app. As on Android, you’ll want to add the Bitdefender Central app because it gives you access to the same information and actions you get by logging in to the online console.

The Web Protection system uses VPN technology to filter all web traffic. When it encounters a dangerous domain, it cuts the connection and slides in a warning. This is a totally local use of VPN technology—no servers involved. However, it’s not the same kind of protection you get on other platforms. The iOS version blocks connections at the domain level, not at the web page level. So, for example, it won’t catch the AMTSO phishing test page because the underlying AMTSO domain is not dangerous.

My Bitdefender contacts confirmed that this VPN-based technology doesn't interfere with your use of the actual VPN. Just as on Android, a simple on/off VPN is integrated into the mobile app, but you’re better off installing the separate full-scale VPN app. Settings and behavior for this app almost precisely match those of the Android version.

Bitdefender's mobile security for iOS is seriously limited. But again, this is not precisely a feature of Total Security. It doesn't use one of your licenses unless you turn on Scam Alert or Web Protection.

Verdict: Truly Total Security

Bitdefender Total Security builds on the vast collection of security features found in the company’s award-winning antivirus. In addition to expected suite features like firewall, antispam, and parental control, it adds security-focused features such as a performance optimizer, an unusual laptop anti-theft system, and detection of cryptomining attacks. It also extends protection to your Android and macOS devices and, to a lesser extent, your iOS devices. With its massive collection of security features, most of them top-notch, Bitdefender Total Security is an Editors' Choice winner for security mega-suites. If your main aim is full protection for many devices on different platforms, do also consider Norton 360 Deluxe, our top pick for cross-platform, multi-device security.