BitDefender Total Security 2009 Coupon Code and Review

Security solutions software from BitDefender has always had several settings for experts to tweak and customize to meet their requirements. BitDefender Total Security 2009 makes the user interface simple enough for beginners or complete novices to operate and use. Despite this it is still possible for experts to go under the hood and make changes to settings as per their requirements. There are various features that have been added to BitDefender Total Security 2009. When you buy it, you get three licenses and 2 GB disk space online, across your three licenses. If you're not looking for online backup disk space you would be better off buying BitDefender Internet Security 2009 for $49.95 and get three licenses.

UPDATE: BitDefender Total Security 2010 has been released. Read Review.

BitDefender Total Security 2009 Coupon Code

Control everything from the dashboard

BitDefender Total Security 2009 has a dashboard from where you can configure and control the software. If there are any pressing or critical issues you can fix them with just a few clicks from this dashboard. There are four areas in which
security can be managed - local security, online security, parental control and vulnerability scan. There are various tools that you have access to clean up files that are not required and to optimize the performance of your computer. With the help of the file manager you can access the area that stores back up files of your computer in an encrypted state. You can access both the local and the online backup. Using the network tab you can remotely monitor and determines settings of, other installations of BitDefender Total Security 2009, across your local network at home or work.

BitDefender leaves it to you to decide which aspects of your system should be considered critical. You can decide whether or not a specific item has to be monitored. If you choose that a specific item be monitored and then when it is not working properly or disabled you will find that the status bar turns red.

Certified by major labs

Anti-virus software from BitDefender has been certified by two reputed testing labs - West Coast labs and ICSA labs, both of whom have given it thumbs up for its ability to detect viruses and remove them.

Flexibility of scanning

BitDefender Total Security 2009 as a combined virus and anti-spyware scan that checks files when you access them, when you want them scanned or when a scan is run as per schedule. When scheduling a scan you can decide when you wanted to run. The interval can range from a few minutes to several onths. You can also configure whether you want a scan to be quick or an elaborate scan. This software is also compatible with most e-mail clients and scans incoming and outgoing e-mail for viruses. Additionally it works with instant messengers including Yahoo messenger, Microsoft Windows live messenger etc.

When we shared media such as CDs, DVDs, pen drives a lot of viruses tend to creep into our computer systems. BitDefender Internet security 2009 automatically scans any new devices that are attached to your system and deals with viruses or malware found on them.

The first full scan that you run on your system may take as long as half an hour or more depending on how many files need to be scanned. Subsequent scans however will be much faster and reduce time taken by a factor of 10 or more. When we tried this software out while the first full system scan took 35 minutes, the second scan, two days later took just a couple of minutes.

This happens because BitDefender Total Security 2009 only scans the files that have changed since the last scan. This saves a considerable amount of time.

If your system has a lot of malware, you need to be more involved in scanning it. BitDefender will scan, delete, quarantine r disinfect files depending on the risk perception. If the risk is perceived to be low when you are given the choice about
what to do.

BitDefender firewall protection

The BitDefender firewall works typically like most other firewalls work. When a program installed a new system accesses the Internet for the first time there's a pop-up asking you for permission. You can grant or deny permission to access the net and can set rules for the program to be followed when it tries accessing the Internet again the next time. The pop-ups are minimal because there are thousands of programs that BitDefender recognizes as legitimate and preconfigured as access for without bothering the user. If a particular program or file is not recognize BitDefender scans the program for viruses. While the firewall protection methods by BitDefender are not watertight there is significant improvement over the earlier version.

Spam protection

Dealing with Spam takes up a lot of time for most people. BitDefender Total Security 2009 has antispam filters that integrate with POP3 e-mail accounts and work with all major e-mail clients including Outlook express, Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook etc. BitDefender Total Security 2009 doesn't work with IMAP accounts. There is a lot of customization that is possible with the antispam settings of the software. There is a toolbar that is compatible with all the e-mail clients that this software supports when you send e-mail to a specific user that user is automatically added to your white list. You can mark an e-mail as spam or not Spam using the toolbar. When you mark an e-mail is not Spam the sender is automatically added to a white list.

On the other hand when you mark something as spam or for the mail from that sender is sent to junk mail. For dealing with spam however one of the best ways is to open a free e-mail account with Gmail. It doesn't cost a dime and will save you the bother of deleting tons of junk mail every day. Gmail works with all POP3 e-mail accounts. BitDefender also marks the mails which are phishing scams.

Protects personal information and protects against phishing scams

BitDefender Total Security 2009 also has a module that prevents the transmission of personal information that you specify through web forms, e-mail or instant messengers such as Yahoo messenger, Google talk of Windows live. Private data is prevented from being mentioned in e-mails or instant messages. It also blocks that forms and prevents the user from entering in personal information in the web forms. There is a wizard that helps you enter in your private information and specify whether or not you wanted to be blocked in Internet firms, e-mail messages, instant messages or all of the three. After you enter in the data it is encrypted by the defender and this ensures that no one else can access this information. This is an important tool that can be used to prevent phishing by storing the access information of these websites as private data. You
can then exclude the specific websites from this protection. Then if you try to enter your eBay user ID and password on a website that is pretending to be eBay, the defender will prevent you doing so.

Internet access control

You can determine the identity controlled settings for each user account specifically after you have logged in using the user access information. If you use the default settings of the software you'll get several prompts - when a website sets a cookie, uses a script, an applet or an ActiveX control. If you set the software to ignore these you won't be bothered to frequently.

BitDefender keeps an eye on the websites you visit and lets you know when it finds you opening up what could be a fraudulent website. This is done via a pop-up warning. You can choose to override the warning. BitDefender is very effective when it comes to protecting you against phishing frauds.

BitDefender Total Security 2009 also has several parental control features. You can enable or disable parental control on any specific user account. You can change the password for an account easily. Parental control functions in three areas - web control, application control and Web time-limiter. BitDefender uses a database of websites it considers bad to block access to them using the web control feature. Application control blocks access to specific programs installed on the computer. This s a foolproof way and your kids will not be able to work around it. The Web time limiter specifies when a certain user is allowed to access the Internet and the total amount of time here she can spend online. You can also prevent a specific user from accessing the Internet entirely. The keyword filtering option lets you prevent access to any specific web page, e-mail
or instant message that contains any of the keywords specified by you. You can also block instant messages from certain contacts. Yahoo messenger and Windows live messenger are supported.

There are ways to prevent users from accessing porn from your system, using bit defender. However expect to generate a lot of false positives - legitimate websites blocked because the software perceives them to be inappropriate. If you don't want alse positives and go with the ' teenager' setting the porn prevention becomes somewhat ineffective. This is how the ' heuristic' filtering works with BitDefender.

The BitDefender Total Security 2009 vulnerabilities scan helps you protect your computer by searching for potential problems such as passwords that are too easy to guess and critical updates for your operating system that you haven't applied. The wizard takes you step by step through the process of fixing these issues. It is recommended that you run this scan once a week.

Protects your files

BitDefender comes with built-in disk defragmenter, a registry clean up tool and one that will clean up the cache and cookies in Internet Explorer. This is similar to most other security solution products. The registry cleaner prompts and asks you if you want a specific entry deleted. It provides its own risk assessment of deleting that entry. You can protect your files and keep them encrypted; password protected in various ' file vaults' with each file vault having
its own user ID and password. You can then open the file vault and access the files only with the user ID and password. You can do away with any file vault that you no longer need. The files are then deleted and become irretrievable. You can delete files using their file shredder in such a manner that even top forensics experts will not be able to retrieve them.

Backup - On your system and online

You can back up important files on your system to any media that you choose - CD/DVD/hard disk drive/network drive/USB drive back up your data online using an FTP server. You can create multiple backup jobs when the store files when required. You can restore files that have been backed up at any point of time in the past. You can schedule backups to take place automatically at a specific time or specific intervals would you can choose to run the backup when you want. BitDefender provides you with free online storage of 2 GB to be shared across your three installations. If you need additional disk space you can get 5
GB of disk space for just $29.95 annually or 10 GB of disk space for $39.95 annually. After the initial backup has taken place BitDefender will only backup files that have changed since the last backup. The subsequent backups are always much quicker thanks to this file synchronization method. The quality of online backups offered by BitDefender compares favorably with many other online backup solutions. There is a great degree of customization and configuration that you can do here.

Monitor and manage your entire network

You can monitor the entire network of computers that have a BitDefender Total Security 2009 install from a single location. You can run scans, apply updates, patches, defrag hard drives, clear caches and do a lot else on remote systems. You can determine one system as an update server and use it to download and apply patches to all systems that have BitDefender installed. This will save you the bother of downloading updates across all computer systems – save bandwidth and time.

There are several features that BitDefender has that will protect your network, save you time and improve performance overall. The ease of use and configuration makes a BitDefender total security solutions 2009 a good choice.