France Connect - computer says no

General Discussion
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As many of you will know, France Connect is a digital authentication device that guarantees a user’s ID to over 1400 French government sites/services by drawing on existing accounts where the user has already been identified. These include the Impôts and Ameli sites.

I was accessing the ANTS site, and for the particular outcome I was seeking (concerning a data protection issue), it required me to confirm my identity via France Connect…I assumed there would be no problems since I have long had an Impôts site and regularly use it.

Computer said no. Repeatedly.

I now understand, having spent a couple of hours with the extremely helpful France Services lady locally, that you cannot use France Connect if you do not have a social security number. I don’t (I’m currently privately insured for health care, for a variety of reasons).

Fortunately - so far - there are likely to be few instances where I absolutely have to use France Connect (I won’t be claiming a French pension for example) and there is no workaround. But it’s quite possible that in time more services may require ID confirmation via France Connect.

I just hope the ANTS UK driving licence exchange isn’t one of them…!

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when does your UK DL expire… ???

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I rarely use FranceConnect to go onto different official sites - I’ve created individual logons for each one. Do you have an ANTS logon (it sounds as though you have), because, if so, I doubt if you’ll need France Connect when the time comes to exchange your licence - at least I didn’t last year!

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Using France Connect is an option, not an obligation.

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It certainly is for logging on but George seems to be saying that it was an additional check within a site…

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Creating your own account in ANTS

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You simply need to choose: create your ANTS account

fill in the info required…

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fill in right to the bottom, make sure you prove you aren’t a robot by clicking the appropriate thingy… and don’t forget to click the general conditions box

then click on "créer mon compte

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there are some things to do with vehicles, which cannot be done, but changing the foreign DL is not one of them

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must confess, it seems daft to me that they allow one to choose which method of accessing France Connect… and I always click on Impots… never Assurance Maladie or any others… and never been challenged…

but, these are strange times… :wink:

and perhaps if George was accessing sensitive stuff maybe they thought he was AI :wink: …

When accessing ANTS, if one already has an account…
https://ants.gouv.fr/
I go straight to “se connecter”
then ignore the France Connect button and go the the right of the page and enter in the required details… “avec vos identifiants ants”

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That’s how I do it too, Stella but I think George was already in ANTS and needed this other validation step for what he was doing? Perhaps I read it wrong…

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I wonder what he was doing… I’ve read page after page of their blurb… (yawn)… :wink:

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You’re a glutton for punishment, Stella!

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Nope… I’m having to sit by my computer anyway, waiting for a contact to come through… yawn… and I’ve missed my siesta… (double yawn…)

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Thankfully not for another 2.5 years… as an aside,interestingly ANTS told me and France Services today that you could apply to exchange one year before the expiry of the UK DL- I must admit this is contrary to what I had previously understood (6 months per expiry I thought was the exchange period).

That’s a relief to hear!

I agree that whilst that’s no doubt true for the vast majority of services, it seems there are a small handful (per France Services) where using France Connect may be necessary eg apparently accessing a French pension for the first time (so I was advised today).

However I found one example yesterday, which is what prompted the whole exercise. I had successfully created an ANTS account, in order to stop the distribution of my name and address and car registration details to a variety of local CT centres (see a recent thread). This process had to be done within ANTS, per the small print on the relevant documents from CT centres.To do this, the final step within ANTS required validation of my ID via France Connect. No other option was offered (within ANTS).

You’re quite right Angela!

I do too, sometimes! This process became an end in itself. I stubbornly refuse to be ground down by bureaucracy and take it as a challenge…!

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and if it’s about a French Penson etc … one would already have the necessary social security number… and, of course, double-identification would be an understandable safeguard…

whatever, it’s been a long (and interesting…) day… now I’m signing off and going for supper.

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A postscript…

In an effort to find an account that France Connect can use to identify me, I tried to create a digital ID with La Poste, a France Connect partner (along with Impôts, Ameli etc)… All went swimmingly until I entered my carte de séjour details. La Poste require a CdS with a validity of 5 years. The computer kept saying ‘non’. I called a humanoid at La Poste to try and understand what the problem was.

The agent told me my CdS was invalid for this purpose as it was ‘missing’ a day. I asked her what she meant. The CdS was issued on 5 Nov 2021 and expires at midnight on 4 Nov 2026. That’s exactly 5 years by my reckoning. She wouldn’t have it at all, saying it was 4 years and 364 days. She refused to escalate my query to a manager. It’s like saying a card issued on 1 Jan which expires at the end of 31 December isn’t a one year card. Utterly bizarre.

I have reluctantly abandoned my campaign to use France Connect…

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For anyone struggling with France Connect I’ll share this i found just now.

I got “computer says no” 4 years ago when I first tried to use France Connect app to ID myself.

Had to try again this evening to get a government form done. This time the government site fed me to France Connect website (not app).

First time round France Connect Computer says no. I’d had to choose to use my CPAM details, as I fill out a paper tax return so I haven’t a tax login.

The failure came back into the government website that needed me to ID myself as from CPAM. Failed as CPAM system “not available”, “try later”.

I thought as it was midnight this could just about be reasonable. However some experience with “indisponible” systems and perhaps occasional people, in France told me “indisponible” may mean “just doesn’t feel like it”.

So I decided to be a bit sneaky and try one thing.
As midnight felt just a bit early for CPAM system to be unavailable due to maintenance updates.

So in another window of the same browser, I logged into my CPAM Ameli espace as a separate thing. All fine and it let me in.

Then I just left that logged in other window in same browser open. As it would have an “I’ve verified this login” cookie in that window now, that other windows in that same browser would be able to see.

Went back to the government website window, clicked again to identify myself using France Connect, selected CPAM as my verification option, and this time the login to CPAM worked in France Connect and so this time France Connect worked.

So if France Connect refuses to work for you, log in directly to CPAM or Impôts (whichever you’re using in France Connect) in a different window of the same browser directly, and leave that window open & logged in. When you go back to France Connect and try again I think the odds are France Connect will work.

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I cannot think of any situation where France Connect is actually necessary. It is simply an alternative way of logging in, for people who prefer to minimise the number of different passwords they use. Once logged in, it is exactly the same as if you had logged in directly to that site. It is only logging in via France Connect Plus that gives access to the functionalities that require extra security.

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