Scammers have targeted students ahead of the new school year in France, with thousands at Aix-Marseille University receiving a fraudulent email demanding 450 euros in registration fees, while separate fake websites have offered secondary school pupils early access to their class lists in exchange for payment and personal data.
The email, sent through the university's internal messaging system, asked recipients to ensure the 450-euro payment was made quickly. It arrived about ten days before the start of the school year.
Celia, a student at the university, and her mother told the French television programme TF1's 20H news bulletin that they had no doubt at the time that the request had genuinely come from the university. Celia's mother said they had eight days to pay, and that in the middle of August, with everyone on holiday and the university closed, it seemed plausible.
She made the payment and realised only minutes later that it was a scam. Celia said that as a student, it was already hard to live on what she had, and losing 450 euros meant she and her mother would file a police complaint.
How the hackers got in
Cybersecurity expert Damien Bancal said the hackers had likely infiltrated the university's systems by first sending a phishing email to a student, an administrator or a professor, inviting them to click a link. He said that if the target clicked and entered their login details, they effectively handed over their keys, giving the hacker access to the entire university directory.
Aix-Marseille University, located in the south of France, said it had put protective measures in place to limit the spread of further fraudulent emails.
Fake class-list websites
Younger students have also been targeted. On social media, some users have promoted a supposed "technique" for finding out in advance which class they will be placed in for the new school year. This, too, is a scam. The videos direct viewers to fake websites designed to collect pupils' personal information.
One secondary school pupil, who clicked through to see how far the scam went, said the sites asked for an email address, first and last name, and the name of the pupil's school.
The sites can also request pupils' bank card details. Two students named Noah and Baptiste, interviewed by TF1, said they never went that far, but that for one or two euros, the sites promise access to the class list. One of them explained that the real scam begins once the site has the bank details, at which point it can charge whatever it wants.
Sites mimic official design
The scammers' aim is to make money, either by persuading young people to hand over their bank details or simply by redirecting them to advertising pages that generate revenue for the site's operators.
At least ten fraudulent sites have been identified, including revealclass.fr, maficheclasse.fr, voirsaclasse.live, trouveclasse.com and mafutureclasse.com. While the names do not sound official, the sites' designs imitate those of institutional websites. One site displays a large French flag at the top of the page and, at the bottom, the words "Ministere de l'Education nationale," despite having no connection to the ministry.
Ministry response
France's Ministry of National Education, which oversees primary and secondary schools nationwide, has said that no website can reveal class compositions in advance. Class lists are drawn up locally by individual schools and remain confidential until the day before, or the day of, the start of term.
The ministry noted that fraudulent sites of this kind can be reported through Pharos, the French government's online portal for reporting illegal internet content.
