Irish tax payers have been targeted by an email scam designed to harvest your credit card and/or bank details.
Many have received the message, see image right, claiming to be from the Irish Revenue Commissioners. The fact that it is just at the time that people are thinking about filing their personal tax returns, with a deadline of 31st October, makes people very interested in messages of this sort.
The Revenue states that this is a “phishing” attempt, where the link leads to a site purporting to belong to the Revenue, with a form to enter sensitive information. (Scams like this may also contain a link that leads to a site where a virus is automatically downloaded to your computer, possibly a virus that will harvest information off of your computer, so don’t chance clicking a suspicious link to check if it’s legitimate.)
The scammers have cleverly used the Revenue logo and colours, but the link is pretty obviously not relevant. Some scammers try to make the link look more relevant, so don’t ever assume that it’s safe to click unless you are sure that the message is genuine.
Luckily in my case, Gmail flagged it as spam straight away, so I was suspicious from the beginning.
There are a number of things that flag this as a scam:
– The message is sent to a mailing list of ‘recipients’ and not a specific addressee.
– The “From” address is also completely irrelevant.
– There is no check-able contact information included.
– There is no information included that specifically identifies you in the way the organisation would.
– Did they use an email address that you have ever given to this organisation? They didn’t in my case.
– Note that when you hover over the link “filling out and submitting this form” the link is not to the Revenue Commissioners’ website, it is to a completely unrelated website.
See more about how Gmail flags spam here: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1366858?hl=en-GB&expand=5
If you aren’t sure, contact the supposed sender, or even just check their official website to see if they’ve issued information about this saying to expect a message or that there is a scam going on.
The Revenue Commissioners have posted a news item about this scam: http://www.revenue.ie/en/spotlights/email-scam.html. In the item they state “The Revenue Commissioners never send emails requiring customers to send personal information via email or pop-up windows.” This is the case for most state organisations, banks, etc. that would hold sensitive information about you.
Have you already clicked the link? According to the Revenue Commissioners: “Anyone who provided personal information in response to these fraudulent emails should contact their bank or credit card company immediately.”
The Revenue Commissioners give further information on security in dealing with them online at: http://www.revenue.ie/en/security.html.
