The government has set up a new aid at the pump intended for 10 million French people: the fuel allowance. For the past few days, a fraudulent SMS campaign on this subject has been circulating. Hackers pretend to be the tax authorities to try to suck up your personal and banking data.
10 million French people can benefit from the fuel allowance. This aid at the pump of 100 euros is intended for low-income workers who use their vehicle to get to work. While seven million beneficiaries have still not made the request, crooks are trying to take advantage of this to intercept taxpayers’ personal and banking data. This fraudulent SMS campaign on the fuel allowance was denounced on the official tax website.
How to recognize the fuel allowance scam?
The General Directorate of Public Finance specifies that it does not communicate by SMS to promote the fuel allowance. If you receive such messages, they can only come from thugs posing as tax authorities. The SMS will be accompanied by a link that will send you to a fake tax site. The goal is as always to recover your personal information for malicious purposes.
To read > No, this fraudulent email does not come from your landlord, beware of the scam!
As a reminder, just complete this form before next February 28 to apply for the fuel allowance. You will need to give your tax number, your license plate number or the form number of your gray card. A sworn statement indicating that you use your vehicle well to go to work will also be required.
While education on cyber-maliciousness is progressing, unfortunately, phishing scams continue to affect many naïve users. Recently, we denounced in particular the Crit’Air sticker scam. This is also set up through fraudulent SMS. To better defraud them, the criminals try to scare the victims by threatening them with having to pay a fine.
When you receive this type of suspicious message, the first thing to do is not to click on the link found there. If you have any doubts, contact the service mentioned through official channels to find out for sure.
