[Part.3] – What to do in case of phishing?

Did you realize you clicked on the wrong link, made a hasty transfer, or acted quickly after receiving an email or SMS?

Then you need to act. But what to do and whom to contact? Find some answers in this article.

1. Contact your bank to stop payments

If you have communicated details about your means of payment or if you notice fraudulent debits on your bank account. The payer’s liability is not engaged if the unauthorized payment transaction was carried out by misusing, without your knowledge, the payment instrument or the data linked to it (article L.133-19 II of the Monetary and Financial Code)

2. Contact your IT department (company) or an IT security expert for advice.

If you are a complete novice on topics related to online security, do not hesitate to ask your contacts who know a little more, or even much more, than you.

In a company, immediately contact your IT department, your CIO, or your General Management to get help, and to report any intrusion to them.

3. Immediately renew the identifiers and/or passwords of the compromised accounts.

As soon as you realize you have fallen for an online scam, do not wait; change your password immediately on the site or application through which you were phished.

If this password is the same on several applications, accounts or mailboxes, you will also need to change your passwords, because the password you use on several sites will have been compromised and known to online hackers.

4. File a pre-complaint online to facilitate the procedures.

The online pre-complaint allows immediate reporting of the facts, making an appointment remotely to file a complaint, and therefore reducing the waiting time when filing the complaint at the police or gendarmerie premises.

4.1. The online pre-complaint, how does it work?

a. The victim makes an online declaration on the site: www.pre-plainte-en-ligne.gouv.fr , and fills in a pre-complaint form.

b. The victim will then choose the police station or gendarmerie brigade where they wish to come to sign their complaint, as well as the date of their appointment.

c. The victim will therefore be contacted by the police or gendarmerie services to confirm the appointment, and to inform them of the documents needed to provide when filing the complaint.

Warning: an online pre-complaint does not replace a complaint at a police station or gendarmerie brigade, but it allows an online pre-declaration to be made for an offense against property, theft or fraud.

The legal value of a complaint takes effect after a report has been drawn up and signed with a judicial police officer or a gendarme.

Learn more on the website of the gendarmerie nationale

5. File a complaint at the police station or gendarmerie

By providing all the evidence in your possession such as screenshots, emails, proof of transfers, go to your police station or the gendarmerie near you.

As a reminder:

Filing a complaint allows a person to inform the justice system that an offense has been committed of which they say they are the victim.
Pursuing the complaint may lead to criminal sanction of the perpetrator.
The victim may become a civil party if they wish to obtain compensation for their harm (damages).
If the victim does not know the perpetrator, they must file a complaint against persons unknown.

6. Contact the “Info Escroqueries” telephone service

To be advised in case of phishing you can contact Info Escroqueries.

Set up by the Office Central de Lutte Contre la Criminalité liée aux Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (OCLCTIC), the “Info Escroqueries” platform is staffed by police officers and gendarmes who are responsible for informing, advising and guiding people who are victims of a scam.

Following the collection of these complaints, the OCLCTIC teams are responsible for cross-checking as many complaints as possible, in order to exploit them and put an end to malicious practices on the net.

If you wish to contact “Info Escroqueries” you can call 0 805 805 817 (toll-free number, free call Monday to Friday from 9 am to 6:30 pm).

The OCLCTIC depends on the national police and more specifically on the Sous-Direction de lutte contre la cybercriminalité (SDLC).

Whom to contact in case of phishing?

1. Report the phishing to Signal-sp am.fr. Reporting is acting.

Signal-spam.fr is a platform that collects all the technical information needed to identify a spammer, or a spam of a cybercriminal nature. Following your report, those of the community and the study of spams that may turn out to be phishing, Signal Spam takes care of redistributing the information useful to the fight against spam, which will therefore make it possible to warn and protect the future targets of the phishing that affected you.

2. Report the address of the phishing site to Phishing-initiative .fr

This organization will check whether it is a phishing site and, if it is proven to be such a site, will shut it down.

From the Phishing-Initiative.fr site, you will be able to:

check whether the address of the site you are on is a fraudulent site (reported by the online community),
report the address you have spotted as fraudulent if it is not already recognized as such (for the attention of all internet users)

If the address is proven to be fraudulent, it will then be blocked in browsers.

3. Report the incident on the government site PHARO S

Pharos is the acronym for “Plateforme d’Harmonisation, d’Analyse, de Recoupement et d’Orientation des Signalements”.

As with the “Info Escroqueries” platform presented earlier in this article, this platform is also managed by the OCLCTIC and therefore the National Police.

This online platform, also called the “Official Portal for Reporting Illicit Internet Content”, makes it possible, as its name indicates, to report illicit content and behavior online.

4. In case of smishing, abusive or fraudulent SMS or MMS, forward it to the following phone number: 33700

This SMS alert system was created by telecom operators, service publishers and hosting providers, in consultation with the Secretary of State for Industry and Consumer Affairs.
Following your message transfer, you will then receive a second message asking you to send to 33700 the number from which you received the abusive SMS.

This information will be passed on to telecom operators, including yours, who will be able to act quickly against the organizations behind these SMS.
Sending an SMS to 33700 is free for Bouygues Telecom, Orange and SFR customers.

To learn more about the number for reporting fraudulent SMS and MMS, visit the website www.33700-spam-sms .fr