I was messaged earlier by someone on discord who supposedly wanted to play games. I was already suspicious because the message came out of nowhere and I had no prior instance of messaging this person.
They went as far as to talk to me about video games, hop on call with me, talk to me with their real voice, & exchange cat photos. They then mentioned the game “unsolved case” to play together so i downloaded it.
This game is on steam and 100% legitimate, I warned the developers on their discord and they’re supposedly going to warn players of this scam to prevent people falling for it. The scam involves them pretending they have connection issues to convince you into downloading a VPN. They set this up by saying they’re from Brazil and they needed to use it to play with their other friends. I very clearly told them I don’t trust the link and they still stayed on call with me for 20 minutes trying to “restart their VPN” in order to pressure me to cave. This is where I realized it was a very very convincing scam. The website looks AI-generated and every button but the download one doesn’t work.
Please no matter what don’t download any VPNs that random people on Discord tell you about, and be wary of anybody who adds/messages you out of nowhere. I get tons of these messages but this one was insanely well hidden. They mentioned my Discord banner, struck up lots of small talk related to our mutual servers, and seemed very relaxed while I was starting to figure them out. Their profile was even very legitimate looking, having had Nitro (Discord’s paid subscription) for a couple years and a real looking Instagram page attached to it.
Even after all of this I wasn’t 100% sure they were a scam but earlier I saw a post on this sub mentioning the same VPN and how they got their email stolen because of it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1h3r0m1/comment/lztgoqv/
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No one should ever install a program that some random tells you to.
why would you need a vpn to play with someone else? that’s not how that works. the discord account was probably stolen.
!whois steelshieldvpn.com
So you could tell the site was untrustworthy and scammy and you did it anyway?
You are allowed to say no to strangers
WHOIS REPORT FOR STEELSHIELDVPN.COM
This domain name was created ONLY 53 DAYS AGO!! and it was only registered for a single year (Expires: Oct 2025).
The person/organization who registered this domain claims to be based in Brazil. It is also concerning that they are hiding the rest of their contact info on Whois AND they are using a “DNS proxy” (CloudFlare) which masks where the website’s server actually is.
^(DISCLAIMER:) ^(This is a pre-alpha bot for informational purposes only. Feel free to) ^(contact) ^(my creator with any concerns or feedback.) ^(
WHOIS)
The game choice was super deliberate, if you join their discord they actually say using a VPN can solve some connection issues
I didn’t do it lol. I was never going to download a VPN that registered their domain last month and have no web presence. This is just a warning for people who aren’t as knowledgeable about viruses/scams
Your comment was automatically removed because you commented a clickable link when using the WHOIS command. Clickable links to potential scam websites could be removed by Reddit Admins and your account could be struck with a suspension. To avoid that, we removed it for you before an Admin sees it.
ScamsBot doesn’t need the https:// or the www. part of a domain. Next time, you should try to comment in this format:
!whois steelshieldvpn.com
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
WHOIS)