Watch out for irresistible SNCF promotions that are currently circulating on Facebook and by email! These are phishing campaigns aimed at defrauding travelers looking for great vacation deals.
The summer period is a real godsend for scammers of all kinds, and in particular for scammers who redouble their activity and ingenuity to trap tourists and vacationers looking for good deals to travel at a lower cost. Cybercriminals have understood this well by setting up various scams based on promotions and other irresistible offers to better lure their victims. At the moment, unscrupulous little clever people are usurping the identity of the SNCF to launch particularly elaborate and credible phishing campaigns. It is all the more effective as the train is the preferred means of transport in relation to the environment and the ecological crisis that we are going through. The problem is that the prices are getting higher and higher – so much so that it is sometimes cheaper to go by plane, a shame! In short, so many conditions that make scams particularly attractive!
SNCF scam: promotions on fake Facebook pages
Like any good self-respecting social network, Facebook is full of scams. But if you have to be wary of messages from strangers and proposals that are too good to be true, the danger can also come from public pages, which allow professionals, companies, celebrities and associations to discover their activities and easily enter into contact with users. Journalist Alexandre Lenoir launched an alert on Twitter after spotting a page “Discounted train tickets” which offers to obtain a gift card offering one year of free travel for only 1.95 euros. To “take advantage”, you have to click on a link that sends you to a page intended to recover the victim’s personal data and bank details.
The worst part is that this page is promoted by Facebook, since the posts have been sponsored in order to gain visibility. The SNCF responded in commentary that a “report has already been transmitted to the dedicated teams who have initiated procedures.” Alexandre Lenoir notes in passing that these advertisements have been running for several months, without Meta doing anything to remedy them.
SNCF scam: real or false promotion?
But this is not the only scam that awaits Internet users and budding travelers. Other journalists have spotted a phishing campaign, carried out by e-mail, offering a huge – and fake – promotion on the SNCF Avantage cards – which notably offer second class price caps and discounts. Normally, the card costs 49 euros, but the email offers to have it for only 1 euro. Of course, it’s too good to be true! Still, this phishing campaign is all that is most credible. First, the sender’s email address, “[email protected]”, is quite plausible, as is the URL of the fraudulent site to which the victim is redirected, “oui.sncf.fideleteavantage. com”. If the site has since been closed, others will quickly take its place.
To better deceive the victim, the content of the email repeats word for word that of a previous promotion – real this time – offered by the SNCF in June, which made it possible to win 10,000 Avantage Jeune cards. Enough to blur the lines between what is true and false, while crossing the anti-spam filters of mailboxes. Worse still, the fraudulent page displayed a padlock to the left of the URL bar, a sign that the connection is made using HTTPS, a secure communication protocol using an encryption system (HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, or secure hypertext transfer protocol), and which therefore theoretically guarantees the confidentiality and integrity of the data exchanged with the server. A symbol that makes the user believe that the site is reliable – while it simply indicates that the connection is secure. The page in question offered to take advantage of this promotion and order your Advantage card by entering your bank details. In short, classic.
Also, it is more important than ever to remain vigilant, while scams are becoming more and more elaborate. If you plan to book a train for your summer holidays, make sure that each promotion is actually put in place by the SNCF, especially if they ask you to provide your bank details. And don’t forget, if you are ever the target of an online or SMS scam, forward the message immediately to 33 700, a platform specializing in reporting scams, to Signal Spam or to Pharos. You can also report these fraudulent messages to the site internet-signalement.gouv.fr. Then block the sender’s number to stop being bothered.