“Don’t stay alone with a manipulation professional.” This is the call launched by the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) on Friday, after the revelations of the World about the presence of Russian spies in Leboncoin. “Unfortunately espionage is not only in the movies,” added the intelligence services.
The target audience for this disclaimer is individuals offering to tutor. via the classified ads site, in particular for students or recent graduates, economics engineers for example, from whom the spies manage to extract information according to the exchanges.
According to the DGSI, these spies act according to a well-established modus operandi: posing as consultants or businessmen wishing to take private classes, the false student will try to obtain more and more precise information, sometimes confidential, on the subject. study.
signs to detect
If the relationship established between the teacher and the student seems trivial at first, these spies are nonetheless identifiable thanks to precise signs: they usually make an appointment in a public place, and they are very difficult to locate by phone or by mail.
As for payment, they only pay in cash, specifies the DGSI. The remuneration can also increase regularly depending on the level of sensitivity of the requests.
If these data in general are not sensitive taken one by one, it is their accumulation that the Ministry of the Interior fears.
“By accumulating (the data), by the same person or by other information channels, we can conclude what is happening in France,” explains Lova Rinel, a researcher associated with the FRS, on BFMTV.
“Very old practices”
According to Alain Rodier, director of research at the French Center for Intelligence Research, interviewed on BFMTV this Sunday, the intelligence services may first target people abroad to contact.
“They know which students have a good profile,” he explains. “First they focus on colleges and topics that interest them. They reach out to a certain number of people, then they focus on a few individuals.”
“These are very old practices,” recalls Jérôme Pellistrandi, defense consultant for BFMTV, referring to the Russian espionage cases around the Concorde plane in the 1960s. “We must remain extremely vigilant (…), we can give very quickly information and favor Russia today” without wanting to betray his country, he adds.
“Grandes Ecoles students must be aware of the risks of manipulation by the great foreign powers,” agrees Olivier Védrine, political scientist and editor-in-chief of the Russian opposition daily Display. According to the first investigations of the DGSI on this subject, 12 cases have already been identified in France.
Leboncoin “could never have imagined such a scenario”
For its part, Leboncoin says it “learned this information from the media.” “The article of World evokes that the making of contact begins with a response to an advertisement for an offer of private lessons (…), in accordance with the vocation to link boncoin, and that the real reason occurs once the relationship has been established outside of our platform”, CEO Antoine Jouteau reacted: “So we could never have imagined such a scenario.”
“In any case, since our creation, we have always collaborated with the authorities in the framework of their investigations that require it and obviously we are at their entire disposal for this matter,” insists the company.
Source: BFM TV
