Are you aware of the CPF (personal training account) account scam? NB ! A new form of scam has been circulating for several weeks and this time the renewal of your Vitale card is attacking. Featured in an article by the Parisian, this is the second most common scam in France, according to Jérôme Notin, general manager of the Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr platform, quoted by the newspaper. In an attempt to combat the phenomenon, the Health Insurance has sent out a prevention message, but citizens continue to fall for it. The flaw of a well-established system, difficult to detect because the fraudulent sites “done very well, without errors”, warns in the Parisian Jean-Jacques Latour, Cybermalveillance expert.
Specifically, the scammers contact their victims via text message, referring to a site exactly like the Social Security one (known as Ameli). There he is asked to enter his postal address to ensure the shipment of his new Vitale card. The operation is billed at 0.99 euros. Obviously, no card is sent to the victim. The scammers, on the other hand, now have the person’s banking information.
Then, as detailed the Parisian, it’s escalation. Major purchases are made online. Since they cannot be completed without the consent of the account holder, the scammers have a well-oiled parade. They call their victims by forging an agency phone number and posing as a bank advisor. On the phone, the crooks ask their interlocutors to validate the banking operation and demand an immediate refund. Once the operation is validated, it is impossible to go back. The money ends up in the hands of the crooks.
So how do you protect yourself? Social Security reminds us on its site that it will never ask for your tax ID or your affiliation identifiers. In some cases, health insurers may ask for some of the banking information (RIB) to make secure calls, but they will never ask for all of them, and never for a password, not even a temporary one.