Irish Government Cautions About E-Mail Scam

Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs has cautioned that a fake phishing e-mail is circulating, while posing as a message from the Office of Revenue Commissioner to promise recipients a supposed tax refund.

Using the caption, "You are eligible to receive a tax refund!" the e-mail provides a web-link to a copycat site of www.revenue.ie. This site reportedly asks for the user's private information like passport number, its date-of-expiry and bank account details.

The warning that the Department issued followed a call from an individual to the passport office after he gave his passport details to the phishing e-mail that came into his mailbox.

Enlightening on the most recent fraud, a Department spokeswoman stated that never before had it come across such an unsolicited fraudulent e-mail, which sought Irish passport particulars. Irishtimes.com published this on October 22, 2010.

On its part, the Department also observed that it doesn't ever dispatch e-mails, which necessitate netizens towards transmitting their passport numbers along with its expiry dates through pop-up windows or e-mail

Remarking about the scam, Managing Director Dermot Williams of Threatscape stated that although it wasn't evident as to who was responsible for the new fake e-mails, they, however, flowed in a style that was all too typical of phishing incidences of the recent kind. Siliconrepublic.com published this on October 21, 2010.

Williams further said that a fraudster, who got hold of a person's bank and passport details just like they were sought in the current case, had the intention as well as the means for trying out a financial offence hostile to that person. Asking for passport details meant it was especially worrying, so anybody impinged on must inform the Passport Service, he advised.

Reiterate the security specialists that government agencies and legitimate financial organizations don't ever dispatch unsolicited e-mails asking Internet users to provide secret personal information.

Eventually, phishing attacks related to tax rebates seem as though they're copies of the same type of scams being executed across the U.K. Several techniques of financial fraud begin in the U.K or any other country in Europe that following some months head for and enter Ireland.

Related article: IRS Cautions Taxpayers of Recent Email Scam

» SPAMfighter News - 11/2/2010