ETIAS Scam Warning: Don’t Pay Fake Europe Travel Permit Websites.
If you have typed “apply ETIAS” into a search engine in the last few months, there is a meaningful chance the first link you saw was a scam.
Frontex — the European Union’s Border and Coast Guard Agency — has identified and publicly confirmed more than 100 unofficial websites posing as official ETIAS application portals.
These sites are charging travellers anywhere from €50 to €178 for an application to a system that does not yet exist, has never accepted a single legitimate application, and cannot issue any form of valid travel authorisation to Europe. The fee they are collecting disappears.[1]
★★★ ETIAS Europe Official Travel Authorization Portal
UNOFFICIAL COPYCAT SITE
⚠ ALERT: European travel authorization pre-registration is open. Spaces limited. 04:32:18 REMAINING
Apply for Your Mandatory EU Travel Permit Now
All travellers from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia must obtain valid travel clearance before departing for Europe. Fast-track expedited processing available.
Passport Full Name: [Traveler Full Name]
Passport Number: [Harvested Passport Data]
Application and Express Handling Fee: €89.00 (Official fee is €7)
PROCEED TO SECURE PAYMENT →
Accepting Credit Card, Wire Transfer, Crypto
Red flags in this example
Fake domain ending in .com / .org instead of .europa.eu The official EU application portal will only ever be on a domain ending in .europa.eu (travel-europe.europa.eu/etias).
Demands €50–€178 upfront The official EU fee is €7 (and free for minors and seniors). The system is not even operational yet.
Urgent countdown timers and false guarantees Fake sites use timers like 'Applications closing soon' or 'Guaranteed Fast-Track' to rush travelers into paying.
Recreation built from details reported by Traveltourister & Frontex. It shows the format and claims the source describes; the exact wording is illustrative, not a copy of a real message. Links and numbers are non-working placeholders. Recreation based on Frontex and Traveltourister documentation of copycat ETIAS portals.
How the scam works, step by step, in the alert’s own words. The source did not publish the actual message, so this is a description, not a screenshot or transcript. Tap the animation to enlarge it.
How to Protect Yourself
Do not send money because of an unexpected call, text, or email. Hang up and contact the agency or person yourself using a number you look up independently.
Contact the organization directly using a phone number or website you look up yourself, not one provided in the message.
How to Verify This Yourself
Read the original alert directly at Traveltourister — that page is the primary source for everything above.
Investigative methodology: this update was produced by scripts/scam_monitor.py from a real Traveltourister alert — not a language model. The quoted text above is verbatim from the source; any message or description shown in the illustration is quoted or copied from the source itself (see its caption); when the source does not publish the scam’s wording, none is shown or invented. Protection tips are matched from a fixed keyword list, not generated per story.
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