News



Beware of scam emails claiming to be from HMRC

18 - 12 - 2013

It has been brought to our attention that a small number of our clients have received phishing emails claiming to be from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) recently.


Phishing is the fraudulent act of emailing a person in order to obtain their personal/financial information such as passwords, credit card or bank account details. 

We would like to remind our clients that HMRC will never send notifications of a tax rebate by email or ask you to disclose personal or payment information by email.

If you are in doubt about whether or not an email is genuine, do not click on links or open email attachments. Doing so may result in your computer or other device becoming infected with a virus designed to obtain your personal information.

Beware of emails that:

Come from fake email addresses - A selection of fake email addresses claiming to be from HMRC include:
services@hmrc.co.uk
service@hmrc.gov.uk
service.refund@hmrc.gov
secure@hmrc.co.uk
hmrc@gov.uk
taxes@hmrc.co.uk
taxrefund-notice@hmrc.gov.uk
refund-help@hmrc.gov.uk
service@online.com
email@hmrc.gov.uk
refund.alert@hmrc.gov.uk
refunds@hmrc.gov.uk
customs@hmrc.gov.uk
srvcs@hmrc.gov.uk
alertsonline@hmrc.co.uk
info@hmrc.gov.uk
rebate@hmrc.gov.uk

Ask for personal information – HMRC will never ask you to give confidential or personal information by email.

Tell you to ‘act urgently’ – Fraudsters often try to panic people into acting on their emails. Beware of emails that contain phrases such as ‘urgent action required’ or ‘you only have two days to reply’.

Link to fake websites – Fraudsters may link to websites that look like the homepage of the HMRC website in order to get people to provide personal information. Fraudsters may also include genuine links to HMRC’s website to trick you.
Contain generic greetings – Fraudsters usually send mass emails and therefore will not usually include your name. Beware of emails with phrases such as ‘Dear customer’ or ‘Dear sir/madam’.

Contain spelling mistakes and bad grammar – Official correspondence with HMRC is unlikely to contain spelling errors or poor grammar.

If you suspect you have received a phishing email, you can report it by forwarding it to phishing@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk. It is advisable to delete the email once you have forwarded it.



 

 

 

 

 

Foremans LLP Umberlla
Foremans LLP