Spammers Run Tax Refund Scam in Australia

Cyber criminals have been pilfering identities of Australians in order to claim their tax refunds. It has been found that online scammers have launched phishing scams that use Australian Taxation Office communications as disguise to trick people into giving away their personal details.

The Australian Tax Office has identified some of the common attack vectors used by cyber criminals, such as fake websites, identity fraud, fake e-mails and phishing attempts.

The ATO has realized the gravity of the situation when it found 31% rise in the number of online security breaches incidents targeting tax office systems. As nearly 90% of tax returns take place through internet, the ATO said that personal information of taxpayers could be used by scammers to claim fraudulent refunds.

The office further said in a report submitted for parliamentary enquiry that the loss of revenue and sensitive information via identity fraud were the toughest challenge faced by it, as reported by Heraldsun on August 24, 2009. Other cyber scams mainly focused on seizing personal information of computer users such as passwords and banking account details that were used by criminals to steal money from the account.

Hacking incidents not only harm the person whose identity has been stolen but they considerably affect the reputation of banking system as people lost confidence on the security of the system.

The ATO has also acknowledged that a chunk of scams detected by it were related to phishing attacks which scammers used to trick people for harvesting their credentials. However, security experts believe that the ATO databases would be prized by hackers but there was no clue if its systems had been broken in or not.

Cyber criminals (both inside the country and operating from outside) have shown great reliance on the use of malware that have considerably grown in the past few months and target mainly to financial and banking sectors. Government organizations have also captured the attention of malware writers.

Moreover, phishing scams associated with tax return have rapidly surged in Australia over the past few months. In June, the Tax Office warned people against fraudulent e-mails circulating on the web. They caught attention of taxpayers by offering 30% discount on tax and even contained the office logo for making people trust them.

Related article: Spammers Continue their Campaigns Successfully

» SPAMfighter News - 9/7/2009