Tax-Related Phishing E-mails Targeting Citizens of Ireland, Cautions Revenue.ie

Revenue.ie has warned that one phishing e-mail campaign is doing the rounds for Irish taxpayers telling them that they are entitled for a tax reimbursement because of an excess payment done earlier, published independent.ie in news on February 7, 2014.

It maybe noted that Revenue.ie, a government agency in Ireland, performs the function of collecting taxes from the country's citizens.

If recipients of the phishing e-mail follow a given web-link to land on a web-page named 'account set-up' the latter would produce one 'return to Revenue.ie' web-link that takes the user onto Revenue.ie's main page.

It has been a while that the scam went into operation starting in October 2013 and recently distributing the messages on February 3, 2014.

Telling more about this phishing e-mail scam, a Spokesperson of Revenue.ie stated that the agency knew about the fake e-mails being circulated while impersonating Revenue.ie. These had web-links to sites capturing users' private information with regards to tax reimbursements, but weren't from Revenue.ie, he explained. Independent.ie reported this dated February 7, 2014.

The Spokesperson added that Revenue.ie didn't ever dispatch e-mails asking consumers for giving their private details over e-mail, text messages alternatively pop-up windows.

However, Revenue.ie advised anybody who gave his details as a means for answering the bogus text messages else e-mails to necessarily talk to his credit card firm or bank without delay.

It further advised that anybody getting an e-mail claiming it was a Revenue.ie message but which appeared a fake or scam should send it at webmaster@revenue.ie. The person may instead even request his tax district for verifying if a tax refund was pending and what was its status. The district details could be obtained via one's Personal Public Service number and contact locator, Revenue.ie added.

In conclusion, similar tax-related e-mail scams have been targeting other tax collecting bodies too like the CRA (Canadian Revenue Agency) of Canada. In that, during the 1st-week of January 2014, phishing e-mails circulated informing recipients that they'd got certain reimbursement from CRA, as per an alert that Lewie Sutherland, Police Chief of Kensington issued. Journalpioneer.com published this in news on January 1, 2013.

» SPAMfighter News - 2/13/2014