Why Stay On Alert For HMRC Tax Rebate Emails?
OnTax Dunfermline Accountant has discovered that HM Revenue and Customs have issued a warning to taxpayers to stay alert of receiving tax related phishing e-mails. Complaints from last year’s statistics show that nearly 80,000 scam e-mails were received that claimed to provide tax refunds in exchange for private details.
OnTax Dunfermline Accountant has become aware that these e-mails demand private details such as credit card number and bank account pin codes in return for tax refund. We can reveal that HMRC is raising awareness among its customers to ensure that they don’t fall for such scams and is giving advice of what to do if they ever receive one.
These Scam Emails Involve Huge Risk!
The common message that has been identified in these scam e-mails is something like this:
"We have reviewed your tax return and according to our calculations of your last year's accounts you are entitled to tax refund of X"
Once the e-mails inform taxpayers about their tax refund they provide additional links which directs them to a fake HMRC website that is similar to the official one in order to trick the taxpayers in to believing that it’s real. We have also learned that these e-mails then ask for private details which is where the actual danger begins.
HMRC are strictly forbidding people to provide any personal information for they believe that the information is used by organized criminal gangs to steal money from taxpayers bank accounts. We believs that if some person falls for such scams, apart from having their private information disclosed, they can risk having their banks accounts emptied which can be a huge financial blow.
HMRC has stated that they never contact their customers by e-mail and that they only contact them through posts if this is ever necessary. HMRC has advised its customers to forward scam e-mails to HMRC directly and to delete them from their email inbox after having forwarded them.
We have learned that taxpayers are also advised not to open suspicious e-mails and also to avoid clicking links and opening attachments from any of these suspicious e-mails.
We advise that if anybody is in doubt about having revealed information to such scam e-mails than they are advised to contact their banks and credit card companies as soon as possible to ensure safety.
As If Paying Tax Wasn't Bad Enough, Being Scammed Is Worse!
Scamming Is Rife!
Apart from identifying 80,000 phishing E-mails, HMRC also tracked down nearly 522 illegal websites and effectively shut them down. We have discovered that HMRC has also revealed that the origination of these sites was identified to be from several countries including Japan, Russia, Unites States of America and Central and Eastern Europe.
We appreciate HMRC efforts as it has been trying to do their best to make people aware of the fact that they would be selling their personal information to criminal gangs by replying to e-mails like these.
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