If you normally do a tax return whether its a business or just required normally to do one then please read on.
Just be aware that there is a very authentic looking E Mail which is indistinguishable from genuine Inland Revenue E Mails inviting you to claim a tax refund from the tax year 14/15.
There is a link within the body of the E mail inviting you to start a claim . Don't press that button unless you have very upto date Maleware .
This is the first time ever I have been fooled as the amount is approx what we are waiting for . I don't normally fall for these but they got me hook line and sinker . Thankfully we have quite sophisticated anti malware and it blocked it immediately when I pressed the button .
I have contacted the Inland Revenue and they confirm that they wouldn't put a link into a body of an E mail for a tax rebate even though they do place links into their E mails for things like training Webinars etc.
The E Mail has now been transferred to our Junk folder so my brother doesn't make the same mistake .
a scam of PayPal is also knocking about. If you get an email from them asking for details whatever you do don't send anything. Instead click on to your PayPal account yourself and check all is ok. PayPal have said they will never email you asking for your details. The whole scam site looks exactly the same
Yeah ive had the tax one and the PayPal onem the best way to recognize them is the legitimate ones have details which the phising scans dont. I rang PayPal about it and they didn't care, saying delete it. I was like, erm excuse me what about vulnerable people who fell for this extortion? They had no interest whatsoever. I was furious. At least Amazon take the email and it's contents and investigate it. You would think PayPal who are basically a bank would be more concerned about these crimes, makes me sick. didn't think about posting about them here. Fairplay mysteron lots more people will be aware now 💜xx
Yeah ive had the tax one and the PayPal onem the best way to recognize them is the legitimate ones have details which the phising scans dont.
I rang PayPal about it and they didn't care, saying delete it. I was like, erm excuse me what about vulnerable people who fell for this extortion? They had no interest whatsoever. I was furious. At least Amazon take the email and it's contents and investigate it. You would think PayPal who are basically a bank would be more concerned about these crimes, makes me sick. didn't think about posting about them here. Fairplay mysteron lots more people will be aware now 💜xx
When I phoned PayPal I was taken very seriously and advised they always ask by name on email not dear member, also changed my password too,. Scams are getting harder to spot, if in doubt delete, phone company concerned.
We had one of those IR scam emails last week. Luckily we get so many (the common ones being UPS, TNT, etc 'We have been unable to deliver your parcel...' scams) we tend to treat all links in emails as suspect. With most browsers the URL to which the link really points is shown if you just run the cursor over the link and in general this is a dead give-away as it's not going to anywhere remotely connected with the organisation from whom the email purports to come.
If in doubt we leave it. If someone really wants to get in touch they will try other ways.
I've been getting a tax return one, saying I overpaid and they're issuing me a £253 refund! Luckily, A. I'm not that daft and B. It was so poorly written it stood out like a sore thumb!
Yeah ive had the tax one and the PayPal onem the best way to recognize them is the legitimate ones have details which the phising scans dont.
I rang PayPal about it and they didn't care, saying delete it. I was like, erm excuse me what about vulnerable people who fell for this extortion? They had no interest whatsoever. I was furious. At least Amazon take the email and it's contents and investigate it. You would think PayPal who are basically a bank would be more concerned about these crimes, makes me sick. didn't think about posting about them here. Fairplay mysteron lots more people will be aware now 💜xx
When I phoned PayPal I was taken very seriously and advised they always ask by name on email not dear member, also changed my password too,. Scams are getting harder to spot, if in doubt delete, phone company concerned.
I think they also told me that they always address by name. I've informed several companies of scams and my memories terrible so could be mistaken. I think PayPal should have the same system as some other companies where you forward them to and they deal with the problem.
Oh they're definitely getting more sophisticated with their scams. There's the telling signs though, like no name, you know instantly than it's a scam 💜xx
So just an FYI on another scam involving Ebay this time.Â
They are calling members up advising they owe money usually around £20. Their calls go straight to my V-mail and they leave a ref number and a number to call back.  The number starts 0113, but as it's a scam it can also change.Â
Ebay has confirmed this is not them as I do not owe any money, mainly due to the fact that I have not sold or bought anything!Â
Be very careful always check with the customer services department with calls like this and another trick is google the number.
There are a lot of scams going about at the moment . Another one involves Amazon stating you have goods in your basket and you may need to check them out by pressing a link.
A good practice is to checkout the E mail address as to where they have come from first. Normally they are someones personel address and not the companies that they are purporting to be. Eeven after this check don't press the link. Always go through via the home page on the web.
Another good practice if you visit Porn sites, is to run a secuity scan on your system after leaving the site. Porn sites are notorious expecially the free ones for having spyware attached to them .
This week i have had TWO via TEXT! One was supposedly from HMRC claiming i had a £246.53p tax refund with a web link.The other was supposedly from the DVLA saying they were desperately trying to contact me and it was my last chance,with a web link.In both cases i quickly realised that both HMRC and DVLA have ALL my contact info EXCEPT my mobile number,so why not contact me via those other avenues? A quick Google confirmed my suspicions.Both are phishing scams.
To me with all of these, what is more worrying is the trend. The scams are getting more sophisticated and far more frequent. They are also using the phone to contact you pretending to be you broadband provider. Its not just the every day users that are affected either .Just take a look at the latest news about the N H S computer system in total lock out and being ransomed .Just hope their own computer boffins can sort this out without having to hand over any public money to the scammers.
I'm surprised that the NHS is still running XP machines with internet access. Some banks still run XP in cash machines etc but have employed third-parties to do the maintenance that Microsoft don't now provide for that operating system. Anyone with an XP machine that still has internet access is a sitting duck.
I have to maintain one machine with XP as I have code that I still need to use that has not been updated to run on anything later but I took the wifi card out of it as soon as Microsoft stopped supporting it as the only way of keeping it secure.