About Me

Kevin McGhee

Kevin McGhee
Research Scientist

Read More

Feeds & Podcasts

Blogs

Meet the Bloggers

Archive

Tags

#SecChat $1 million guarantee 12 Scams of Christmas access to live fraud resolution agents Acquisition Alex Thurber Android antivirus Apple botnet Channel Partners cloud security Compliance Consumer counter identity theft credit card fraud and protection credit fraud alerts credit monitoring credit monitoring and resolution critical infrastructure Cyber Security Mom cyberbullying Cybercrime cybermom data breach data center data center security Data Protection Dave DeWalt DLP Email & Web Security embedded encryption Endpoint Protection enterprise facebook fake anti-virus software Family Safety Friday Security Highlights global threat intelligence google government Hacktivism how to talk to kids how to talk to teens identity fraud identity fraud scams identity protection identity protection $1 million guarantee identity protection fraud identity protection surveillance identity surveillance identity theft identity theft expert identity theft fraud identity theft protection identity theft protection product Identity thieves and cybercriminals intel iphone kids online behavior lost wallet protection malware McAfee McAfee Channel McAfee Family Protection McAfee Identity Protection McAfee Initiative to Fight Cybercrime McAfee Labs McAfee security products Mid-Market Mobile mobile malware mobile security monitor credit and personal information Network Security online personal data protection online safety Operation Aurora PCI personal identity theft fraud personal information loss personal information protection phishing privacy proactive identity protection proactive identity surveillance Public Sector restore credit and personal identity Risk and Compliance scam scams scareware security smartphones social media social networking social networks spam Stuxnet twitter vulnerability Web 2.0 work with victim restore identity

Tax Year Over.. Phishing Begins

Monday, March 26, 2007 at 12:07pm by Kevin McGhee
Kevin McGhee

As the end of the US and UK tax years approach on April 15th and April 5th respectively, we have seen some HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) phishing, but to date we haven’t seen the level of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) phishing activity we had anticipated. Most of the HMRC phish emails look very convincing and ask the recipient for the details of the credit card number you want your tax refund to be made to.

The image below is a recent example of a fake HMRC site we have seen being used in this scam:

There are several things we can all do to protect ourselves against phishing:

  • Always be suspicious before logging into or entering any details into a website. You can check the address bar and links to make sure the correct domain is present, but beware links can be formatted to make them look like they are from the correct domain. The best thing to do is to type the address of the site you want to login to directly into the browser rather than clicking on links.
  • Never give out credit card or bank account details in response to an email. As a general rule banks and other financial institutions do not send emails asking you to enter these details.
  • Keep your anti-virus and anti-spam applications up-to-date. Use other tools like our free SiteAdvisor product that has built in defenses against phishing.

There is further information on other fraud attempts the HMRC are aware of on their website . The IRS also have phishing high on their dirty dozen tax scams and have recently issued a reminder about internet sites that resemble the official IRS site.

Bookmark and Share

Submit your own comments / message for this post

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

 

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Comments (0)