Fraud spam?

Bobbear

Hi,
I've received a very professional looking email, (that has gone into my Gmail spam folder), from https://static-hello.bitdefender.com/ (with a response link to the following response domain: https://static-hello.bitdefender.com/u/nrd.php?etc etc), to say that:

"Dear ******,
The decision to discontinue a product is never easy.
This is especially so when a product is as popular as our Free Edition product has been for the last years.
Since early 2020, we have had to weather immense changes in our industry, changes which 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. etc etc..."

I'm always wary of links to php code anyway so I checked on the bitdefender.com and bitdefender.co.uk websites and couldn't see anything obvious about this discontinuation so I assume it is a fraud spam. If it is, it is a very convincing one.

Whether it is fake or not - ideally you need to put something on your website about it. If it is a fake sub-domain 'static-hello' on the primary domain bitdefender.com, it would normally indicate that your primary domain bitdefender.com has been hacked and membership data accessed.
Best regards,
Bobbear

Mike_BD

Dear Bob,

The message is legit and it's coming from us.

Stay safe,
Mike

Bobbear

Thanks for the reply, Mike.

That's a shame, sorry to hear that you're leaving the 'free AV' market, but I respectfully suggest that you document it on your website(s), (unless I just missed it. of course!)

GMail thinks its spam, so I guess a lot of people before me have reported it as such, (I didn't!)

You'll be missed!

Regards,

Bob

Mike_BD

Hi Bob,

Thank you again for your observation and feedback - I made sure it reached the team.

Also thanks for you kind words 😊.

Stay safe,

Mike

SD55

I have a related question. I recently received an email from connect@hello.bitdefender.com about completing a purchase in my cart. All the links in the email start with "static-hello.bitdefender.com/u/nrd.php" etc. I assume this is a real email and the links (static-hello) are OK. I did visit the webstore earlier that day. I started to make a purchase but didn't. Thought I'd cleared out the shopping cart.

Mike_BD

Hello @SD55 ,

That message is legit, so nothing to worry.

Stay safe,

Mike

SD55

Thanks so much for the quick response!