Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Watch out there's a fake HMRC website about - and other scams

The current scam starts with an email that purports to come from HMRC and reminds taxpayers of the 31 January deadline for filing tax returns. (NB: This is the deadline for online filing as 31 October was the deadline for filing paper based tax returns).

The email reads "Over the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of £99.23. Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 3-6 days in order to process it."

It then contains a link which claims to go to the HMRC website. However, it actually takes users to a fake website - designed to look exactly the same as the real one. Unsuspecting victims are then asked to enter key financial data before being redirected to the real HMRC website. In the meantime their financial data is used to remove money from their bank accounts and they may be unaware of this for some time.

HMRC's website contains two valuable pages on the subject of spoofs, scams and frauds:

If you are generally concerned about online frauds, phishing emails and scams, you will find loads of helpful advice and tips here: Get safe online


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1 comment:

  1. Thanks for sharing this Mark, my personal advice is to always work with a good accountant

    Louisa Nardini

    ReplyDelete