ATO asks Taxpayers to be Wary of Tax-themed Scam Emails

Online news website Magnet reported on 14th October, 2014 stating that The Australian Taxation Office (ATO), official taxing agency in Australia, is warning the community to be careful of fraudsters as they are targeting people lodging their income tax returns before the deadline of 31st October (2014).

The Magnet itself was targeted by getting one such scam email on Monday morning, 14th October 2014, which read, as "You are eligible to receive a tax refund of $247.09 according to the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity."

The email also produced a tax file number and asked the recipient to click a link to download the form for refund of tax.

The email was sent from an email address, which did not contain ato.gov.au at the end and did not address to any individual but to a generic email address, which has not been use for many years.

Magnet recognized these signs and forwarded the email to ATO, which confirmed it as a scam email.

Magnet published a report on 14th October, 2014 quoting Todd Heather, Chief Technology Officer of ATO, as saying "Scammers are trying to get taxpayers quickly lodge their return by the deadline. People should be careful about tax scams and report them to us directly."

Fchornet.com published a report during middle of September 2014 quoting a warning of Detective Superintendent Brian Hay as that one should never access personal information on Internet cafes and use only updated operating system to avoid the chances of being victimized by such scam emails.

He added: "You must get latest anti-virus patched so that your system gets scanned regularly on daily basis. And you need to be more disciplined about what information you provide on the Internet so that you don't post too much personal information or photographs on a device which has activated the geo-locator settings as it informs the crooks about your whereabout."

Meanwhile, it is not only the Australian taxing agency which is alerting people about tax-themed emails as Revenue Commissioners, the tax-agency of Ireland, also released similar warnings because scam emails there also promised refund of tax to innocent taxpayers.

» SPAMfighter News - 10/21/2014