Crit’air sticker scams

The Crit’air sticker, which indicates the level of pollution generated by your vehicle, is compulsory in more and more cities. But to get it, some French fall into the trap of scammers. Thus, a man was scammed of almost 40 euros to obtain one before receiving the one recognized by the State at 3.70 euros. Duped by a fairly well-made website, a retiree will never receive his first vignette.

On the internet, sites selling the Crit’air sticker abound. Some pretend an intermediary service charged several tens of euros, others require a monthly subscription. For the past few days, text messages have been arriving on the phones of certain people referring to a false government site. The message indicates that their thumbnail is to be recovered “under penalty of fines within 48 hours”. “We are going to play on people’s fear, for example of having a fine, to encourage them to give information and to give their bank card number”, explains Jean-Jacques Latour, cybersecurity manager at cybermalveillance.gouv.fr. This is then reused in different forms of scam.