Microsoft Defender: Security Reviews

by Sam From MSFT

I’ve lost track of the number of legitimate websites that get blocked but MicrosoftDefender. 50% of public WiFi login screens are getting blocked. I can’t use wifi at my gym or favorite cafe without deleting MicrosoftDefender. Absolutely incompetent engineering by Microsoft. A downgrade in every way. Legitimately considering leaving the company over this unless someone competent fixes MicrosoftDefender , or we get corporate phones.

by Pseudopsyche

I’ve used my work calendar through the built-in Calendar app for years, but now it never stays in sync essentially rendering it unusable. Battery drain is also a real problem when this is running. To be clear, I don’t mean the percentages that are attributed to it in Settings, I mean that my phone literally dies earlier in the day on days that I have this enabled. This is the case on days with similar usage and screen on time.

by GamerAlex

Never thought about it before because everyone says iPhone mini has a smaller battery but after talking with other people about how terrible my battery was I started looking at the reports and see MicrosoftDefender taking 20% of my battery use! No wonder everyone here complains about the battery drain! It’s actually true!

by Aditdalvi

When I’m on airplane mode and I connect to the plane’s wifi, the gogo or United web portal don’t load because of the VPN. When I disable/uninstall MicrosoftDefender, everything works fine. Please fix this scenario.

I will also echo the data and battery usage complaints. I was traveling internationally and MicrosoftDefender used a ton of my roaming data, which is expensive!

by NotExpectMuch

Experience over the last 4 days since I installed MicrosoftDefender: read messages in a messaging app for 1 min, nothing else was running, battery went from 100% to 87%; searched recipes in Edge and battery dropped more than 30% in 5 mins; had to charge my phone 3 times during the daytime…

Need to get a secondary phone to separate work and personal use now.

by Forbes Higman

MicrosoftDefender used 45% of the battery on my iPhone 13 pro max today. This isn’t uncommon. On a good day it uses 20% of the battery.

It also breaks basic functionality in some apps. For example the My Spectrum app won’t even finish loading on my phone when Defender is installed and running.

On the dashboard in MicrosoftDefender all it ever says is that it’s “scanned” 5K+ links in the last 24 hours? It doesn’t matter if I’ve been using my phone heavily, or barely at all. What “links” does this thing think it’s scanning? Where does it find them? What is it “scanning” them for? I navigated to a handful of known phishing sites just to see what MicrosoftDefender would do. It didn’t seem to do anything as far as I could tell.

What value does this provide me, or my company? How is it worth nearly half my battery, and breaking basic functionality in 4 other apps I use?

by MC Aquaduct

MSFT recently required MicrosoftDefender to be running on any phone accessing corporate resources such as email/calendar, etc. Uninstalled after 1 day because it used 15% of my battery. MicrosoftDefender claims it was scanned 8k links in the background. Why? I certainly wasn’t accessing those links. Why is MicrosoftDefender scanning links not in use on the phone? What is the actual background activity?

by Jimmie Lightner

Oh look, all my apps that need data stopped working again! And now they work… I’ve submitted multiple reports about this behavior, but nothing is done. If you’re in the position, it’s best to avoid having this on your primary device. Buy a junk phone for work stuff or prepare to battle IT just to be able to use your own device normally. 😤

by Rachel Shao

I kept putting it off installing it until I needed to dial in for an important meeting and i got kicked out saying I havent installed MicrosoftDefender. Really? After installing it told me it scanned 2k links, what links, I only used outlook and teams to work for the past few hours. Just get employee a work phone. I would rather carry two phones around other than have all these company apps stored on my phone to monitor everything.

by Mirocal

Several legit apps complain about network connection loss, then when I disable the defeater, sorry defender, they’re back on line again. When enabled, the battery life drops from 40h to 26h consistently (on iPhone 13 pro). So much for the claim it’s framed by apps running in foreground. Not reliable enough to keep it enabled, so it defeats its purpose.

by Karkenna

Noticeably slows device resources and browsing experience. Uses way too much data, 1.5 GB per week. Unable to change any configurations to reduce data usage without completely turning off the application and then I cannot use any of my resources on my phone whether they belong to my company or not. Drains battery considerably.

by BobLu1

If there is an option to give negative ratings, I would have given it to MicrosoftDefender. Day 1 I install this and is the biggest mistake I did that day. This application should not break other applications like messages, because now I don’t get new message notifications after installing this. I’m now waiting for a new iPhone SE release to decamp all my Microsoft applications there as a dedicated work phone so that it can no longer ruin my main phone

by This Super Angry IMovie User

MicrosoftDefender Drained My Battery Life, Got 10 Annoying “Harmful Site” Screens When Opening A 100% Safe Link, Destroyed Other Apps, & Breaking My Wi-Fi Network! MicrosoftDefender Is Getting More Worse Than I Think It Was, This Broke 3 Applications Like Apple Maps, Minecraft, & Apple Contacts. Also, I’m Using A 7th Gen iPad & It Displayed The Wrong Device. It’s Named “This iPhone”, But I’m Using My iPad Right Now, You Need To Fix This Kind Of Unfixed Causes That I’ve Experiencing. MicrosoftDefender Is Terrible & I Need To Uninstall MicrosoftDefender Before My Device Is Getting Unstable Now.

by Wowowowowowwowoowow

Between MicrosoftDefender, Authenticator, and the comp portal app, they all work terribly together and have wasted hours of my time trying to set up a new phone this week. I keep deleting and starting over and whether it’s comp portal saying I don’t have MicrosoftDefender (defender) when I already do, or trying to get me to use the auth app when it’s not working yet, the whole thing has been a nightmare. at this point I’m probably just not going to access work things on my phone, period.

by Camphorliage

The corporate required us to install MicrosoftDefender post Oct,25th otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get access to the corporate resource. 7 days since I’ve installed MicrosoftDefender, it has consumed 7GB of my cellular data, 13% of battery in the background while the only two other Apps that have been using more battery are IMs that I’ve been frequently using throughout the week. Uninstalling it now. I’d rather not checkout any resources from my phone and only use corporate PC instead. Thanks Microsoft! Kudos to enforcing our work life balance!

by TIPPERY

I have been using the preview of MicrosoftDefender for a while and have it installed on my iPhone, iPad, laptop and desktop. Now, on my iPhone I cannot login because my account cannot be found and I cannot creat an account because my email address is already in use.

by Infinityball

First the good news is that it runs “out of sight, out of mind”, which I guess is good. The bad news is that when I look at my device stats MicrosoftDefender uses about 50-75% of my battery every day and used about 15GB of data for the month. I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely sure what it’s supposed to do but I know it’s physically costing me money since I now have to charge my phone 2x per day.

by Appledudething

I’ve seen a significant amount of reviews complaining about “High battery usage” and “5k links?? I only used one app!” iOS tracks “battery usage” based on network activity, and because this acts as a VPN, yes, it will show high battery usage, but in reality it’s not. Let’s say Facebook used 10% battery, and Instagram used 15% battery, after installing MicrosoftDefender, you’d see iOS report that MicrosoftDefender used 25% of your battery. I’m sure you get the idea now. You can validate this information by using any VPN client on your phone. Link scans: This is all traffic from your phone: background app refreshes, apps can send request to hundreds of separate links. That’s why you see so many link scans.

Network usage: again, because all apps route their data into MicrosoftDefender, your data usage will be pointed to MicrosoftDefender aswell. If you used 5GB on Facebook, it would show as 5GB under MicrosoftDefender.

by Golam26

I have MicrosoftDefender on my iPhone 12 and on an iPad Air. I have not experienced any issues regarding performance, battery or apps not working properly. Thanks for the VPN!

by TexasPropWash

My battery usage for MicrosoftDefender is 15% normally.
Some website loading issues.
Must disable to use OpenVPN.

Overall, it’s the normal level of EPP annoyance I would expect.

by Davidstephens92

Uses 10-20% of my new iPhone 12 Pro’s battery every day

by 0xeb

Not good for your phone. Drains your battery super fast. Not recommended.

by Shirohini

Consistently comprises at least 12-15% of my battery usage

by Ww_realm

I do not need a full time VPN or my employer upping their spying game.

by WsbTendies

Ds