Do not fall into the panel! While it is now possible to have your identity card renewed free of charge before its expiration date, some sites take the opportunity to charge you the process.
In France, most administrative procedures, even all, are entirely free. Whether it is a request for passports, driving license, identity card, registering on the electoral lists, obtaining a gray card, a Crit’Air sticker, a birth certificate or an extract from the criminal record, none of these formalities requires payment. However, many unscrupulous sites propose to make them for finance, by playing on the ignorance of Internet users.
In itself, this scam is not new yesterday, but it returns to the front of the Internet with the renewal by anticipation of the CNIL. Indeed, since April 1, it is possible to ask to have an identity card in the new format (CNIE) before the expiration of the current card on the simple reason to desire to have your identity papers on smartphone (see our article). But this renewal is only free on the condition of going only through the official website of the French administration, service-public.fr. However, some websites, including those displayed at the top of the results of a search engine like Google, do not hesitate to get to the checkout.
New CNIE: invoice a completely free service
Some sites do not hesitate to buy keywords to appear at the top of the search results: this is called paid SEO. Conversely, official sites are not systematically well placed. Result: the user, by typing a few keywords to find an administrative document, often clicks on one of the first links displayed, without being wary of the commercial nature of the site. And ends up paying unnecessarily …
This is what happens if you type “Renewal Card Identity” in Google. At the top of the first page of results, and therefore before the government’s official website, you will see the CNI-Fra.fr site appear, which allows you to do a “Online pre-Demande of CNI“, in order to “renew your identity card“. A procedure that will be billed 39 euros including tax for a middle finger and 29 euros for a minor, while the official approach is free. To stay legally, the site specifies that”The site and the services are provided privately only, and in no way correspond to a public service mission which would have been delegated to it by any public administration or local authority. Possibility to do your procedures at no cost on service-public.fr“. But it is written in very small, and it is very easy to miss …
To avoid falling into the trap of this type of site, some simple reflexes can protect you. First, check the address of the site: the official sites of the French administration always end with “.gouv.fr” or “.fr”. Beware of extensions like “.com” or “.org”, which are not used by public services. Mistrust also vis-à-vis the first results in search engines: these are often sponsored links, not necessarily official. And beware, the use of blue-white-red or Marianne is in no way a guarantee. The safest is still to go directly through the Service-Public.fr site.