Account hacking, attempted extortion, ransomware, fraud and scams on the Internet: THESEE, the Government platform for filing complaints directly online, has been very successful, especially for fake sales sites.
If you are the victim of an online scam – whatever its nature, with the notable exception of phishing – you no longer need to go to the police station or the gendarmerie on which your home depends, to register a pre- complaint and wait for you to finally be given a physical appointment. Indeed, since March 15, 2022, you can file a complaint directly online. This new service set up by the Ministry of the Interior is called THESEE (or Thésée), an acronym for Harmonized Processing of Investigations and Reports for E-Scams.
And the least that can be said is that the platform has been successful since its arrival. Above all, it seems particularly effective! As bring it back France Inter, the online system collected nearly 85,000 complaints and reports during its first year of operation – more precisely, 68,000 complaints and 16,500 reports – for different scenarios. Thus, 40% concerned fake sales sites – the buyers never received their order -, 17% for fake sellers, 11% for fake buyers, 10% for fake rentals and 9% for profile hacks . The rest of the solicitations relate to attempts at blackmail, romance scams – the scammers pretend to be people looking for love online in order to extract money from their conquest – and blocking of data followed by ransoms – the famous ransomware – or ransomware in French.
About thirty people are in charge of evaluating each case, checking that the complaint is admissible and asking for any additional information. In general, the processing of a complaint or a report is done within 48 hours. Then, the police look for commonalities between the cases, which are then sometimes grouped together in one and the same legal procedure, which greatly facilitates things. In total, no less than 75 investigations were opened, for a total damage estimated at more than 8 million euros. 76 files concerning ransomware were also sent to the competent services.
THESEE: an online public service for filing a complaint
To access THESEE, you must go from your computer or via your smartphone to the official website of the French administration, Service-public.fr and select the section Justicethen in the Offenses section the sub-heading Internet scam. First, you will be asked to complete a questionnaire to specify the nature of the scam of which you think you are a victim. Then, once the questionnaire has been completed, you will have to click on “Access the online service” to be redirected to the relevant department; this service will handle either your filing of a complaint or your report (if you only wish to make a report).
AT At this stage, and to be able to continue the procedure, it is necessary to identify yourself using your France Connect account, theidentification solution created by the State to facilitate connection to several hundred online services. You are then invited to complete an official administrative complaint form where you will provide your personal information, but also and above all a precise description of the facts. Once the procedure has been validated, you will receive a copy of the document and a receipt for your complaint in your personal space. This last document is absolutely necessary to assert your rights and initiate compensation procedures, that is to say reimbursement from your bank or your insurer.
THESEE: almost all Internet-related scams
This online complaint procedure concerns scams frequently observed online (with the exception of phishing, or phishing in French, which is currently very popular). Among the scams taken into account are the hacking of accounts (of emails or social networks), online blackmail which most often results in a threat of damage to the reputation and honor of a person and/ or an attempt at extortion, ransomware (also called ransomware in French) which paralyzes the activity and data of a computer or computer network, the romance scam (or “romance scam”) via dating sites (a practice very well described by the Netflix documentary The Tinder Scammer), classified ad scams (false property rental ads), or even fraud on e-commerce sites. At the other end of the screen, no bots (robots), but a specialized team of 17 police officers and gendarmes assigned to the Central Office for the Fight against Crime linked to Information and Communication Technologies ( OCLCTIC) will take charge of the investigations.
Online complaint filing: watch out for abuse!
While this simplification of the complaint filing procedure is certainly a “more” for Internet users, it is also a means for the Ministry of the Interior to better analyze these complaints, to better categorize them and, according to the various operating methods observed, to better seek out and better identify the perpetrators of the offenses reported. Be careful, however: filing a complaint online is as meaningful as filing a complaint at a police station or a gendarmerie. To be admissible, the filing of a complaint must be supported by specific facts (if necessary, the communication of screenshots may prove useful), but also, and above all, this filing of a complaint must in no case fall under the false statement. Because, as it is recalled on a page which is displayed during the procedure according to article 434-26 of the Penal Code, “false denunciation of facts constituting an offense which have exposed the judicial authorities to useless research is punished by 6 months’ imprisonment and a fine of 7,500 euros”.