Several million people in France have been the target of scammers posing as health insurance, who send an SMS telling the beneficiary that he must update or renew his Vitale card.
Messages stating that your vital card is available
The texts contain a message saying: “Your new Vitale card is available. Please complete the form in order to continue to be covered via the site”.
Accompanied by a link beginning with bit.ly, it redirects to a site very similar to that of Health Insurance. However, there have been many reports of several other forms of fake websites and domains.
Note, however, that Health Insurance will never ask you for your medical or bank details by message.
Nor will it ask you to update your Carte Vitale online – this is usually done at a pharmacy.
Victims are then asked to pay a delivery charge of approximately €0.99 for the new card. However, scammers then use their card details to spend huge amounts of money on the internet.
Sometimes the person may be contacted by someone claiming to be from their bank. Who will tell her that she was the victim of identity theft and that she must provide details before she can be reimbursed.
Stripped bank accounts and credit cards
A woman tricked by the scheme lost €1,200, in part because the scammers were able to contact her via a number that should have belonged to her bank.
“It was incredible, the scammer’s messages were intertwined with those of the bank within the same SMS conversation,” she said. “To say that I thanked them when they had stolen €1,230 from me”.
Her bank then refused to reimburse her, believing that she had “been negligent” in giving her bank details to the scammer.
This carte vitale scam started in January, but there have been repeated waves since, with an expert from the Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr anti-scam service telling Capital: “It doesn’t stop, it’s l most popular scam this year. By using very well made sites, without errors.
“The scammer will have all the information they need to be able to make their attack look like a credible operation. They will call you and say, “Are you Mr. or Mrs. X who lives in X and whose card number is X?” »
And then, when they say that there have been fraudulent actions on their card, the victim will begin to trust them. Thus, they will fall into the trap of the various schemes that the cybercriminal will implement on them.
This scam is currently the second most common in France, beaten only by the fraudulent scheme which sees innocent people contacted by the ‘police’ regarding alleged pedophilia charges.
If you receive a message or e-mail that seems suspicious to you, you should examine it carefully to detect any errors or inconsistencies that may reveal its fraudulent nature.
If in doubt, don’t click on any links and remember that you can always call the organization the message is supposed to come from to check if they actually tried to contact you.
Example of a fake vital card scam site
If you have already shared your bank details, you should cancel your card as soon as possible so that scammers cannot use your account.
If you think you have been the victim of a carte vitale scam, you can report the scam and find advice on what to do via the Cybermalveillance site.