It is an alarming text message that many Strasbourg residents have received in recent times. “Our agents found that your vehicle did not have the Crit’Air regulatory sticker. Please click on the link below to retrieve it under penalty of fines. »
Alert to fake Crit’Air sites
Of course, everything is false and it is in no way the authorities but rather scammers who take advantage of the attention given to the Crit’Air sticker to launch a vast phishing campaign. Currently in France, 11 cities are affected by Low Emission Zones: Paris, Aix-Marseille, Toulouse, Nice, Lyon, Montpellier, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Rouen, Reims and Saint-Étienne.
In each of these cities, motorists must stick a Crit’Air sticker on their windshield or face a fine. Therefore, and since many people are not yet in good standing, scammers have a good chance of hitting the bullseye with this message.
Quoted by our colleagues from France Blue AlsaceEmmanuel Rivière, director of the climate agency at the Eurometropolis of Strasbourg, wants to be very clear: “Under no circumstances will the climate agency contact a person by SMS for the Crit’Air sticker”.
Especially since this phishing campaign is not the only scam concerning the Crit’Air sticker. The public radio thus noted that last week, the official site for ordering: www.certificat-air.gouv.fr was not referenced in the first requests on Google.
From then on, distracted Internet users came across fake sites that sold the precious sesame for crazy sums ranging from 15 to 30 euros, while the sticker normally costs only 3.70 euros, postage included. Since reporting this issue, the situation seems to have improved. We ourselves tested the requests “crit’air”, “critair”, or even “crit’air vignette”, and the government site always came first.
Think before acting
Anyway, this new alert should encourage us all to be vigilant. The prevention messages are well known but we can see that each of us can easily fall into the trap.
Cybercriminals are becoming more resourceful and making fewer spelling mistakes. Faced with these threats, it is necessary to verify the authenticity of the URLs, but also to ask specific questions. In the case of the Crit’Air sticker, we know, for example, that the police will never send an SMS or e-mail to tell someone that they have committed an offence.
