Scam: cell phone data stolen remotely

What if your cell phone conversations or a simple message gave scammers the opportunity to retrieve your contact details? It is the principle of a new scam which affected more than 400,000 people in the Paris region. A car drives slowly and inside, a box takes the place of your usual network without your knowledge. A tool normally used by intelligence services.

The French not so worried

This veritable data vacuum allows scammers to send you fraudulent SMS in real time with the aim of obtaining money. The investigators went up the Parisian network, five people were arrested. Beyond this example, fishing, smashing are all techniques that use communication tools as vectors for scams. The French say they are powerless against this new form of delinquency. “We do our best on bank accounts, important passwords, but afterwards there are lots of things where we say to ourselves ‘if it leaks, it doesn’t matter’”, confides a man. In six months, more than 60,000 people filed complaints for online scams.