You might have heard about the La Poste ‘failed delivery’ scam that’s been making the rounds in France. If you haven’t, here’s a quick rundown: scammers are sending out fake emails that appear to be from La Poste, telling people that their parcel couldn’t be delivered because the recipient wasn’t at home.
The email then asks the targeted victim to click on a link to track their parcel. But this is actually a phishing scam, and if you click on the link, you’ll be taken to a fake website where you’re asked to enter your credit card details. Once the scammers have your card details, they could use them for other purchases as well.
So what happens is that if you click on the link, you will be asked to make a payment of €0.97 to cover for redelivery. And this is the catch, because La Poste never charges for the redelivery service. It is also important to note that La Poste also never uses QR codes when it comes to sending failed delivery messages to customers.
The entire brading including colors and even logo as well as the tracking number that is displayed look like the very delivery failure message you would normally get from La Poste. But if you try scanning the QR code to help you schedule delivery, you will notice that the next step is asking you to enter your payment card details.
If you’ve been a victim of this scam, you need to take action right away. Here are the steps you need to take:
- Contact your bank and ask them to cancel the transaction.
- File a police report.
- Contact La Poste and let them know what’s happened.
- Keep all evidence related to the scam, including emails, shipping receipts, and anything else you can find.
This is definitely a situation you want to deal with as quickly as possible. The longer you wait, the more chances the scammers have of stealing your money.
What you need to do is call La Poste and ask them to check their system for any packages that were sent to your address. If they find one, they will forward it to you. And if there are no packages waiting for you, then you know you’ve been scammed.
So far, it’s been reported that the scammers are targeting people living in the area around Montpellier, but it’s not known yet how many people have fallen victim to it. If you get a call or an email like this, don’t hesitate to report it to the police.
The link has now been deactivated by authorities
The good news is that the fraudulent link also contains the familiar la poste.fr, but a closer look will show you that it’s strange as it is joined by strange letters. The good news though is that the link has now been made inactive by the authorities. This means that even if you were to receive the scam message and click on the link, it will not open and it will not be possible to enter your card details. But of course these scammers are always crafty and can come up with more similar links that can work. So you must continue to be careful.
