French residents warned over fraudulent ‘Assurance Maladie’ emails
Scammers are using urgent requests for personal details to target recipients
People are advised to verify messages through the official ameli website
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Fraudulent emails claiming to be from Assurance Maladie are currently circulating, with the aim of stealing personal and financial information.
Assurance Maladie is France’s universal state-run healthcare system. It is the authority responsible for issuing the carte Vitale smart card for medical reimbursements, itself frequently targeted by scammers with similar emails.
The emails ask recipients to update their records. One such message states: “As part of the compliance process for your personal account, our services are currently conducting the annual verification of contact details.”
The emails create a false sense of urgency by giving recipients a short deadline within which to respond. For example, an email sent on May 20 may request that information be updated by May 22, encouraging people to act quickly without thinking carefully.
At the bottom of the message, there is usually a blue button labelled “Fill in my information”.
If you receive such an email (or any suspicious message or letter claiming to be from Assurance Maladie) the first thing to do is visit the official website and log into your account before taking any further action.
You can check your secure messages on the platform to see whether the service has requested any information.
It is also important to verify the sender’s email address. Official Assurance Maladie emails are only sent from addresses ending in @app.assurance-maladie.fr, @assurance-maladie.fr, @info.ameli.fr or @ameli.fr.
In addition, the service will never ask for passwords, full banking details or bank card information by email, nor will it pressure users into making urgent updates within a short timeframe.
Official messages may sometimes contain links to the ameli.fr website or the recipient’s online account, but users are advised to access these services directly through the official website rather than via links included in emails.
The alert comes after French authorities announced changes to the official Assurance Maladie email layout aimed at helping distinguish genuine messages from scams.
People should also remain cautious of text messages claiming to be from the Assurance Maladie. Official SMS messages are sent only from the number 38663 and begin with the words “Assurance Maladie”.
If a message creates a strong sense of urgency, it is most likely fraudulent.
Anyone who receives a suspicious email can report it through the French government’s phishing reporting platform internet-signalement.gouv.fr. Fraudulent text messages can also be forwarded to 33700, the national spam reporting service.
