[HN Gopher] BitDefender Free has been discontinued
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       BitDefender Free has been discontinued
        
       I just got an email from BitDefender (I personally use their
       antivirus) stating the following (at 10:01 PM tonight), verbatim:
       > Dear [redacted],  > The decision to discontinue a product is
       never easy.  > It's especially hard with a product as popular as
       our Free Edition has been in recent years.  > Since early 2020, we
       have had to weather immense changes in our industry; changes that
       upended many of our cherished plans for product development.  >
       Sadly, Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition has been a casualty of
       those changes.  > As of 1st of January 2022, Bitdefender Antivirus
       Free Edition will officially be discontinued and no longer
       available for use.  > As a Free Edition user, how does this affect
       you, and how should you prepare?  > We will continue to offer tech
       support for our Free Edition until 30st of June 2022. We hope this
       gives you time to choose and install an alternative solution that
       will keep your devices protected.  Thought I'd be a good Samaritan
       and share the news on here, for anyone who isn't subscribed to the
       newsletter. Good luck in finding a new antivirus!
        
       Author : tentacleuno
       Score  : 7 points
       Date   : 2021-12-09 22:07 UTC (53 minutes ago)
        
       | tentacleuno wrote:
       | As the OP, I personally found BitDefender to have the best
       | Privacy Policy I could hope for in an anti-virus (according to
       | ToSDR, anyway). It's one of the reasons why I've avoided Avast.
       | BitDefender just stays in the background, doesn't nag you about
       | buying things, and doesn't surreptitiously collect data in the
       | background.
       | 
       | If I used Windows I would consider paying for BitDefender, but
       | honestly with my setup I only use Windows for educational
       | software. I wonder what the next best antivirus is ...?
        
         | cmeacham98 wrote:
         | If you're not willing to pay, I seriously recommend the built
         | in Windows Defender (assuming you are using win10/11). It's as
         | good or better than every free alternative I've tried, and it
         | comes with the OS - all you need to do to use it is nothing -
         | just _don't_ install another AV.
        
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       (page generated 2021-12-09 23:01 UTC)