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Revenue Minister Attacked Within IRS E-Mail Scam

Online scammers pretending to be officials of Inland Revenue were most unlucky when they dispatched one scam e-mail for phishing Peter Dunne the Revenue Minister. Otago Daily Times reported this on July 6, 2011.

Says the Minister that he along with his staff members got fraudulent e-mails informing that there were tax refunds awaiting them as well as that they required completing an online form for claiming the same.

Dunne also said that the incident was clearly a fraud, for IRD never functioned in that manner. According to him, the arrival of one of the scam e-mails into his inbox as also one into his staff members' inboxes indicated that it (the scam) was quite widespread. 'See It First' published this on July 7, 2011.

However, Dunne stated that it required no mention that he wasn't going to click the web-link nor complete any form, while he could just repeat the routine warnings of Inland Revenue with respect to such e-mail enquiries. TVnZ published this on July 6, 2011.

Actually, electronic mails are doing the rounds which try to defraud people getting them into giving away their private details. Such e-mails are popularly called spoofed or phishing e-mails. Here Dunne stated that Inland Revenue wouldn't ever dispatch citizens web-links inside e-mails; therefore he advised them never to follow web-links alternatively answer such fraudulent e-mails. He added that users must be extremely cautious of revealing their IRD code as also any other private information.

Furthermore, it was also important that people instantly deleted the e-mails not only from their inboxes but also from their trash folders. Said Dunne, perpetrators of such phishing e-mails and spoofed sites were quite infamously hard to trace.

In the meantime, IRS (Internal Revenue Service) lately issued a press statement wherein it described one more spam mail, which told recipients that their direct income tax payments had been refused. Moreover, clicking on the web-link embedded on the e-mail pulled down and installed malware onto victims' PCs, IRS highlighted.

Nevertheless, as Dunne indicated, IRS as well cautioned that people must send those scam messages to phishing@irs.gov before erasing them completely.

Related article: Revenue Commissioners-Faked phishing E-mails Targeting Irish Taxpayers

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