VPN not connecting - Bitdefender IT telling me to buy a program they would not display

KimT

My VPN suddenly started not connecting and I receive a message requesting me to upgrade. I have enabled installed / reinstalled the program, restarted, contacted Support, entered a series of commands and restarted. I allowed a Bitdefender support individulal who called me from the support site to sign into my laptop. They went to a website called Cover my tracks and then told me that my network was not secure. They requested I pay $249 for a Bitdefender plan that they would not give me any information on and became angry when I tried to search online to learn more. I disconnected, changed my Bitdefender password with the same resulst. What is going on?

Alexandru_BD

Hello @KimT,

I suspect that you haven't spoken to a Bitdefender representative, but to someone else. The below article dives into the realm of scammers pretending to be legitimate support representatives:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/28454/

At Bitdefender, customer assistance is provided free of charge. Now, I can't be sure exactly how you came across those individuals, but we've seen this happen before and the article explains how these scammers usually operate. In the event you have a Bitdefender subscription purchased from the official website or a trusted reseller, assistance can be provided by the Support teams (the real ones) and you can get in touch with them using the official contact channels available at the link below:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/help/

Regards

Alexandru_BD

In addition, for all connectivity issues encountered when using the VPN, have the following information available to the Support engineers when contacting them:

1. The OS on which the VPN is running.
2. Central account e-mail address
3. For functionality issues while the VPN is connected, whether the problem occurs on a specific location or all locations
4. VPN Server IP - displayed in the VPN interface (even if the issue occurs on multiple/all servers, at least one example)
5. If you are using standalone VPN or VPN in BMS - this is only for mobile apps.
6. Whether the problem occurs only on mobile data or only on Wi-Fi or present on both. Preferably try multiple networks.
7. VPN app version.
8. Troubleshooting steps attempted so far

I can't know for sure if that upgrade message was legitimate or not, but if we are talking about a genuine message and not some sort of scam pop-up, this would be a recommendation to upgrade to the Premium version and it's usually displayed if the standard's version daily traffic quota of 200mb/device was reached.

Let us know how it goes.

Regards