Scam E-mail Targets Tax Payers at England

In a recent scam, the owner of Riverhouse Inn, a restaurant in Weymouth (Dorset, England) Lorraine D'Agostino, has been alerting the tax payers, mainly business class people residing in England on a fake e-mail threat, reports dorsetecho.co.uk on July 24, 2011.

By the mail message, she was to pay a due of more than £270, as a tax refund. Initially, she thought the mail to be a genuine one as it had a realistic form. Even from the e-mail address, it seemed that the mail had arrived from the government source.

The mail caught D'Agostino's suspicion as being a holder of a larger business, a tax accountant only deal with accounts and people never pay the returns online. Thus, she repeatedly read the e-mail and thinking it to be a computer virus invited Customs and Excise to intervene into the matter, who finally claimed it to be a scam, reported dorsetecho.co.uk on July 24, 2011.

The irony of the fact however lies in the success of these kinds of scam e-mails on tax refund targeting tax payers, indicating that people like D'Agostino are still falling prey to these kinds of scams.

Mrs D'Agostino also administered that small businesses should be wary towards these kinds of scam e-mails. She was also feeling at destitute on considering herself to be an easy prey if she were a small business for which she wanted to help others, reported dorsetecho.co.uk on July 24, 2011.

Besides security experts, HMRC also threatened claimants of increased rate of fake phishing e-mails sent by fraudsters similar to that received by D'Agostino.

However, HMRC signifies that these kinds of mails target the tax payers only through post and it does not use other mode like telephone. In fact, claimants are recommended not to accept mails from any other agencies apart from HMRC as this is the sole responsibility of this department only.

HMRC also recommended recipients of such fake mails as mentioned above to send at phishing@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk.

However, due to phishing attacks of similar kinds, Symantec revealed in July 2011, that the UK has witnessed an increase in its phishing attacks during July 2011, taking the ratio as one in every 127.9 e-mails.

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» SPAMfighter News - 8/6/2011