Fake “Tax Refund” emails targeting UK citizens

The UK tax season came to an end in April, and notifications about tax returns have begun slowly trickling down to the country’s citizens. But unfortunately among those legitimate messages there are also ones that mean them harm.

The contents of the emails are different, but they all seem to be coming from the UK’s HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).

Some say that the recipient is eligible to receive a tax refund, others that the agency has identified an error in the calculation of the recipient’s tax from the last payment, but all include a link that redirects users to a bogus webpage designed to emulate the genuine HMRC website.

As it can be expected, all the banking and credit card details the victim enters into the offered online form is automatically collected by the scammers behind this scheme.

As Hoax-Slayer points out, HMRC – or any other tax agency around the world – will never send tax refund notifications via email, or require taxpayers to disclose personal or financial information by following a link or opening an attachment in an unsolicited email.

if you receive a similar email, you can be sure that it’s fake.