Account hacking, attempted extortion, ransomware, fraud and scams on the Internet: THESEE, the new service set up by the Ministry of the Interior, allows victims to file a complaint directly online.
If you think you have been the victim of an online scam – whatever its nature, with the notable exception of phishing – there is no need to go to the police station or the gendarmerie closest to your home or even register a pre-complaint and wait for a physical appointment. 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, (an acronym which means “Harmonized Processing of Investigations and Reports for E-Scams”). To access it, 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.
THESEE: a new online public service for filing a complaint
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 this stage, and in order 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”.