Fraudulent SMS: the trick to unmasking scams

Health insurance, taxes, CPF account… Fraudulent text messages are commonplace at the moment and it is sometimes difficult to disentangle the true from the false.

The crooks multiply and are more and more talented. They manage to reproduce texts and websites that are increasingly close to the originals. Their schemes are well thought out and give a hard time to the victims who are many to fall into the trap.

According to the 2021 activity report of the cybermalveillance.gouv.fr site, phishing techniques such as these are among the most widespread in France. In 2021, 1.3 million people searched for information and assistance on this topic.

Thus, you have to be more and more careful when you receive text messages from strangers who may seem suspicious to us. It often only takes a few clicks on your part for the hacker to steal sometimes large sums of money.

Fortunately, there are still tricks to find out about criminals. Usually one of the most important clues are site URLs.

Indeed, the SMS would often contain the address of a website. If you look in detail, we generally see that the URL has nothing to do with that of the real site like Netflix or that of the Health Insurance.

However, scammers are sometimes not lacking in imagination. In an alleged text message from Health Insurance aimed at renewing his vital card, the health insurance link looked like the real one. But in reality, the lowercase “L”s were actually capital “I”, as Pleine Vie explains.

Thus, it is important to be attentive to the smallest detail before clicking on the link and filling in your information. Spelling may be another sign because mistakes are common in these kinds of scams.

To make sure you don’t get tricked, also keep in mind that malicious messages often come from cellphone numbers. They also try to create an emergency situation like an imminent billing, to force you to click without thinking.