Tax-Cut Phishing E-Mails Hit City Taxpayers

Online scammers have yet again started attacking taxpayers in Northern Ireland's 2nd largest city Londonderry by sending them fraudulent phishing e-mails. Londonderrysentinel.co.uk reported this on May 26, 2011.

It maybe noted that through phishing, scammers harvest bank account information by dispatching apparently genuine e-mails containing similar URLs.

Meanwhile, ever-since the above mentioned e-mails have surged, the HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) has cautioned taxpayers for remaining watchful.

Actually, the e-mails notify its readers that they're entitled to a tax cut as well as give a web-link leading onto a copycat site of HMRC, wherein they're directed for entering their payment card information.

This information is later exploited for extracting cash out of those users' credit card account. And if they're bank account details the users are asked to enter, then the theft is from their accounts held in their banks, with their private data subsequently traded with other gangsters' groups.

Remarking about the above fraud, Director of Customer Contact Chris Hopson at HMRC stated that incase anybody got an e-mail asserting it was from HMRC while promising a tax cut, the agency advised that that person should erase the message wholly. Londonderrysentinel.co.uk published this.

Worryingly, it isn't only Londonderry that's being hit with fraudulent tax cut electronic mails. Similar phishing messages too surfaced during the 2nd-week of May 2011 apparently sent from Monmouthshire County Council, the body which governs the main region of Monmouthshire.

The Council stated that local people had notified trading standards officials about phishing e-mails coming to them that posed as communications from the tax-collector while displaying the HMRC logo.

Meanwhile, HMRC says that it never notifies citizens about tax-cuts through electronic mail. It therefore urges people not to open any doubtful message rather forward it at phishing@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk. But if anybody has already been victimized with a phishing campaign then he must get in touch with his bank as well as dial the "Consumer Direct" number and seek advice.

Eventually, similar to HMRC warning of tax-cut phishing e-mails, the US Internal Revenue Service and India's Income Tax Department too alerted people to tax-cut scam e-mails.

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» SPAMfighter News - 6/2/2011