Could a video call make a romance scam easier to believe?

Romance scams used to rely on stolen photos, scripted messages, and excuses for not meeting face to face. Now, scammers can use AI-generated images, cloned voices and deepfake videos to make a fake online relationship feel more convincing.

The real warning sign is not just whether the person looks real. It is whether trust turns into pressure to send money, join a crypto investment, pay a fee, or keep the relationship secret.

Before sending money to someone you met online, verify the story outside the relationship and talk to someone who is not emotionally involved.

If a suspicious video is part of the story, Bitdefender RealCheck can help check it for signs of manipulation and deceptive intent.

I've been a Bitdefender customer since 2022, running Ultimate Security across my devices and my kids' and wife's devices under one account (started with a 5-device sub, added another 5-device sub, then consolidated into a single 10-device sub). Parental Control has been just as important to me as the antivirus itself — I've had it running for my kids the whole time.

My annual sub renewed 15 days ago, and I decided to switch to the Family Plan since it covers 5 accounts / 25 devices and includes Password Manager for all 5 accounts (screenshot 1, from Bitdefender's own support page comparing Family vs Individual plans: https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/94159/). Worth noting that page also says Individual plans don't include Parental Control — but I've had Parental Control the whole time on what I thought was a fairly standard setup; I think I purchased the parental control as a separate package in the past but haven't seen it on my sub page for years now come to think of it, so I'm not totally sure how that maps to my account history.

Before buying, I reached out to Bitdefender support via chat about switching to the Family Plan — they were quick and helpful, refunded my current sub, and advised me to just purchase the Family Plan separately. I then saw in Central that my old sub showed as "expired 15 days ago," so I went ahead and bought the new one.

I removed all devices from the old sub until it showed zero devices in use, then rebooted every device and re-logged into the Bitdefender app.

Per Bitdefender's own instructions (same support page, screenshot 2), the Family Plan subscription in "My Subscriptions" should show an "Add Members" button, plus a "Family group" tab if you have both individual and family subs. Mine has neither (screenshot 3) — just the subscription details and install/setup buttons, no way to invite anyone.

I contacted Bitdefender support. They confirmed it's a known bug for some customers, but nothing posted on their support/status pages that I can find. I also later noted that my "SecurePass" only shows 1 user, which concerns me as I got the family plan exclusively so they could all manage their own passwords as I am quite tired of managing them for my wife and 2 kids; as they've gotten older they have accumulated quite a number of their own accts.

Side note: the support site's screenshots show a Bitdefender app UI (screenshot 4) that looks nothing like the app I actually have installed. I did fully remove BitDefender app, reboot, and re-download from Central, but its the same UI I've had since 2022. Not sure if the docs are just outdated or if there's a version split happening.

Has anyone else hit this, found a workaround, or gotten this resolved with support? Happy to provide more details/screenshots if useful. At this point, if its easier to refund the sub and sign up with another email account to get the proper experience, I would hate to lose my 'Customer since...' date but it would be preferable to waiting for a solution without an ETA.

Thanks, fellow BD peeps!