RCMP Alerts Saskatoon Taxpayers about Fake Tax E-mails

The commercial crimes division of Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has issued an alert to the people residing in Saskatoon of Canada's Saskatchewan province that phishing e-mail supposedly from CRA (Canada Revenue Agency) is circulating online.

Detailed information of the scam suggests that different persons across Saskatoon have got e-mails stating that they are entitled for a tax re-imbursement from the tax agency, CRA.

Thereafter, the mail tells the recipient that he should follow a given web-link or open a form given as an attachment. But the form asks for the recipient's private details like his name, birth date and Social Security Number.

It is worth noting that these frauds are called "phishing" scams because they involve fraudsters who "phish" off financial or other personal details from mail recipients.

Continuing further, RCMP cautions that after collecting such details, fraudsters abuse them for stealing the identity of individuals and then committing fraud against them.

Nevertheless, RCMP pacifies taxpayers by adding that CRA will never send a genuine correspondence through unsolicited e-mails. The agency will never ask for personal information from people over e-mail as in the current case.

RCMP is urging all tax-paying residents that in case a scam e-mail of the current kind arrives in their inbox, they should discard it instantly. Moreover, they should directly contact the CRA and verify if or not they're actually eligible for a re-imbursement.

In addition, it is advisable that taxpayers should imbibe certain safety rules. These are - firstly, to habitually log into their Internet accounts and examine the statements. The practice will help them to find out if they have been cheated.

Secondly, they should verify if the URL address given is genuine. For that, they should look for "'https://" in the prefix of the URL. Thirdly, they should deploy anti-spam software on their computers that'll block most phishing e-mails at the very outset. Fourthly, they should update their Web-browsers with the most recent security fixes.

Finally, it is important that people become tech-savvy to ward off exploitation by online scammers effectively.

Related article: RCMP Alert Public against PayPal Scam

» SPAMfighter News - 4/6/2010