HMRC Cautions about Scam E-mails on Taxpayers’ Self Assessment

HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs) has urged advisors to caution emigrant consumers for keeping vigil about getting victimized with phishing e-mails that scammers are distributing prior to January 31, 2012 by when all taxpayers must submit their self-assessment statement, published IFAonline.co.uk on January 16, 2012.

Apparently, mentioning about a tax concession due to the recipient of the fraudulent, phishing e-mail, the scam message directs the user to follow a given web-link. This web-link, however, produces a fake HMRC site that tells the user to enter his bank or credit card information that's actually used when the scammers steal money out of the user's financial accounts or simply sell it on the Internet to other properly arranged crime syndicates.

Director Joan Wood of HMRC Online and Digital, in his remark about this scam stated that the body, if needed to contact any consumer regarding a tax rebate due to him, always did so over post. It, presently, didn't utilize e-mail, telephone, alternatively external companies for conducting communications under the circumstances, Wood added. Herald published this on January 21, 2012.

Understandably, HMRC vigorously associates with probes into phishing events within many countries in addition to the United Kingdom. The organization, so far, has helped in the closure of 185 fake websites that illegally dispatched the bogus tax-related phishing e-mails.

Meanwhile, security researchers note that such phishing campaigns aren't any first time phenomenon. Likewise messages circulated for years when their creators utilized either fraudulent banking websites or HMRC logos in attempts to gain control over users' private account numbers.

Thereafter, investigations were conducted with the aid of civil powers towards initiating certain civil settlement in relation to tax, interest as well as fine.

Eventually, Woods advised that incase anybody got an e-mail asserting as a message from HMRC then he should forward that to phishing@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk prior to erasing it wholly. Moreover, HMRC would make sure those people getting such electronic mails knew how to act towards safeguarding their information, while the body, in collaboration with other departments of law enforcement, was picking the offenders perpetrating the severe crime and ensuring they were booked to justice.

Related article: HMRC - Fake Refund E-mails Tricking Tax Payers

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