How to remove Bitdefender?

Question

Level 1

13 points

How to remove Bitdefender?

Hi,

I'm a regular PC user who has switched to Mac.

I have a MacBook Air OS X Yosemite and I stupidly installed the 30-day trial version of Bitdefender which was a BIG MISTAKE. It slowed down my Mac, and it's only getting worse and worse and worse. Uninstalling a program and its hidden components seems a lot more complicated on a Mac, so I'd be grateful for some help.

Bitdefender seems to be some kind of malware, so rather than uninstalling it using the "official" Bitdefender Uninstaller, which required *another* download from the already dubious Bitdefender website, I tried uninstalling the program in the usual way. However, that did not work. Other Mac user instructions: go to Finder > Go to Folder > ~/Library/Application Support and remove the Bitdefender folder. But there was no folder there to remove. Yet other Mac user instructions: search under Utilities and remove Bitdefender, which I did.

Bitdefender was not showing up in applications, but was still running, as my Mac was slow, and Bitdefender notifications were still appearing on the toolbar "Trafficlight" icon. Moreover, any Google search list had a green "Trafficlight" Bitdefender icon next to it, so it was clearly still active.

In the end, I tried downloading Bitdefender's Uninstaller, which did nothing.

Any operation on my Mac, including editing this text as I'm writing it, takes forever. Bitdefender is a total nightmare.

Does anyone know how to get rid of it?

Or will it automatically deactivate after the 30-day trial period is up?

MacBook Air, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

Posted on May 22, 2016 8:25 AM

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Answer 1

xenafena Author

Level 1

13 points

May 28, 2016 12:40 AM in response to Eric Root

Hi Eric,

Thank you for your advice, but:

EasyFind has bad reviews. It seems to work well, but users are then faced with a situation similar to what I described with Bitdefender, as in the program hides itself and becomes DifficultToFind.

Find Any File has two reviews, easily posted by friends of the app creator, hardly any reason to download it.

The Etrecheck website looks dubious.

Besides, it seems a bit strange that I should have to download *another* application to sort this problem out.

Finder/View/Show Path Bar is useless because the program is hidden, the program icon cannot be seen, yet the program is still running because it disrupts every single thing I do on the mac, and internet searches have an active Bitdefender traffic light sign next to them.

So, where is the Bitdefender program? And how can it hide like this?

Anyone out there know how to solve this Bitdefender problem?

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Answer 2

Eric Root

Level 10

684,927 points

May 22, 2016 9:59 AM in response to xenafena

See if you can find the file(s) using one of these programs. If you go Finder/View/Show Path Bar, it will show you where it is located.

EasyFind – Spotlight Replacement

Find Any File

Try running this program and then copy and paste the output in a reply. The program was created by Etresoft, a frequent contributor. Please use copy and paste as screen shots can be hard to read. This will show what is running on your computer. No personal information is shown.

Etrecheck – System Information

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Answer 3

xenafena Author

Level 1

13 points

May 28, 2016 2:37 AM in response to xenafena

The solution turned out to be simple. And required no downloads or complicated file searches.

Where exactly was the problem?

The problem was affecting my mac when on the Internet, or when Internet pages were open (which is pretty much always). Therefore, obviously, it had to be some program or add-on directly connected to the Internet.

So, I went to:

Safari > Preferences > Extensions > and this is where I saw "TrafficLight" (by Bitdefender) was active. I could choose to "deactivate" it or "uninstall". I uninstalled it. It is gone. All the above problems I was having are gone. Yay!

~ utter mac novice

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Answer 4

etresoft

Level 9

53,702 points

May 28, 2016 5:47 PM in response to xenafena

xenafena wrote:

The Etrecheck website looks dubious.

Hello xenafena,

I am the developer of EtreCheck. I can assure you EtreCheck is perfectly safe. Can you tell me why the website looks dubious? That is definitely not the impression I want to convey. I would appreciate knowing what makes it appear look dubious so I can fix that. Thanks.

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