Freely subscribe to our NEWSLETTER

While we are all familiar with parking ticket, delivery, carte vitale, CPF and Crit’Air sticker scams, a new phenomenon developed in 2023. In this case, cybercriminals send text messages pretending to be your child, claiming to have lost or broken their phone and asking you to transfer money to them.

Stuart Jones, Director of Cloudmark at Proofpoint, says: "The increase in SMS and social networking scams is particularly worrying; cybercriminals spend a great deal of time and effort (often weeks) building trust with their targeted victims by initiating what starts out as a benign and innocuous conversation designed to deceive their vigilance and bypass technical and human defences. There are many variants of these attacks and all mobile users should be particularly sceptical of any messages from unknown senders, especially considering that artificial intelligence tools allow cybercriminals to make their attacks more realistic than ever."