“Who has not received an SMS inviting them to log into their CPF (Personal training account) or Ameli account in order to loot their personal or bank data?”, Laments the Minister for Digital Jean-Noël Barrot in the Sunday newspaper. One would be tempted to add: who has never been disturbed by a text message or an email warning him of the imminent arrival of a package with a link leading to a site imitating that of a carrier? The answer is simple: probably nobody. The online scam today has become suffocating. Almost daily. The number of reports on the Thésée platform provided for this purpose is an illustration of this: already more than 60,000 complaints have been filed since its inauguration in March 2022. However, Internet users are far from denouncing each attempt against them.
The subject had therefore become obvious. The anti-scam filter, pillar of the new law on digital security presented this Wednesday, May 10, tries to provide an answer. It is based on a list of Web addresses that several authorities such as the repression of fraud (DGCCRF), will label as malicious. The Internet user will receive an alert when he goes to one of these sites. Operators, browsers or domain name providers will be asked to quickly update the list. The effectiveness of this measure – like others within this digital law – remains to be demonstrated. What if oversights or delays in updating this list offered a false sense of security on the Internet and multiplied the power of current scams?
Whatever happens, this filter, whose implementation in the event of a favorable vote by Parliament is planned by the end of the year, could have dissuasive and educational virtues. The scam on the Internet has been industrialized for a few years. Many are still unaware that the slightest information – banking, identity, or identification on any site – feeds a highly lucrative black market on the dark web. Many experts are also concerned about the new strike force offered by artificial intelligence, capable of helping scammers to write messages and build websites more real than life (sometimes even personalized) to extort this precious information. Vigilance is more important than ever. Even more so when you are really expecting a package.