Indian Government Warns Taxpayers of Phishing Scams

According to cyber crime expert 'Sanjeev Shah' based in Vadodara (Ahmedabad, India), the Indian Ministry of Finance has suggested taxpayers that they should overlook e-mails requesting for credit card information by notifying recipients of tax refunds, as reported by Indianexpress this on January 2, 2010.

Apart from the suggestion, the Ministry has revealed that many people in anticipation of receiving tax refunds disclosed their payment card particulars to such e-mails' senders and consequently had their financial accounts drained.

Hence, taxpayers are warned not to reply to these e-mails unless they do so at their own risk.

Shah cited a small example to show how severe the e-mail scam was. According to him, every week he received a minimum of 2-3 calls from individuals who became victims of the messages, as reported by Indianexpress on January 2, 2010.

Shah further states that it isn't that people innocently get attracted to these phishing scams rather it's the assurance of money used by phishers as bait, which tricks the e-mail recipients into following the messages.

While a few people instantly withdraw when asked to send Rs. 50,000 as processing fee, others make the payment to the scammers that result in the loss of their funds.

The Ministry of Finance made it clear that no e-mails are ever sent from the Income Tax Department with request for credit card details. Actually, any reputed organization, especially a Government organization, wouldn't ever request people to provide personal identifying details over e-mail.

Besides, these types of electronic messages aren't genuine, but unsolicited dispatched in bulk.

If anyone has become a victim of this kind of phishing scams, he should lodge a formal complaint or contact the officials, advises Shah together with other cyber crime experts.

In addition, taxpayers getting such messages should know that in spite of appearing authentic, these scam e-mails contain wrong spellings, poor punctuation and bad grammar. Users are suggested to avoid clicking on web-links provided in the e-mails since they could have computer viruses. Rather they should manually enter the URL link straight into the address bar of their browsers.

Related article: Indian Financial Industry Facing Rising Online Fraud

» SPAMfighter News - 1/11/2010