Despite the Income Tax Department’s warning last October, tax payers continue to receive fraudulent e-mails promising income tax refunds, but with changed wordings.
Apparently, the authorities were not able to crack down on those behind the fraud who seem to be operating from outside the country. They appear to be using servers in the United States and the United Kingdom (UK) and UK domains.
The attempt is often to extract the credit card or bank details of recipients who are asked to open an attached file. The file masquerades as a PDF, and on opening, connects a website of a U.K.-based company. The Income Tax Department had clarified that it do not send e-mails regarding refunds and do not seek information regarding credit cards of tax payers, and had warned tax payers against responding to such e-mails.
If the earlier e-mails were configured to be from the domain account.net, they now fake the ‘from’ address in such a way that they might appear to be from the official domain of the income tax department incometaxindia.gov.in, but for a spelling mistake in one of the entries.
One of the latest e-mails said: “Dear applicant, After the last annual calculation of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of Rs 18,000. Bank account holders at the Bank of India, will receive the money within 12 hours after filling the form. To Access your tax refund please complete the form attached to this email.”
Those supplying the information risk losing their money in their bank/credit card accounts.
