Just wanted to warn others. I've just got an email from agent.hmrc.gov.uk telling me I had a tax refund - well it is that time of year. All I have to do to claim the refund is click the link and fill in the form. If you get this or a similar email, and I must say it does look like very official and has all the right logos, do not click on the link but forward the email to [email protected]
Had them. Doesn't look very official to me jb but I have probably seen a lot more of this ****e than you. For a start and the most obvious is anything in front of hmrc is Bollocks. Hmrc, same as anything else official (to my knowledge) doesn't have a word in front.
incorrect normal practice is for format to be [email protected] & i would assume that would be the norm. More unlikely is that it would be a personal email address as would normally expect it to be a centralised email account to which the required HMRC agents have access to such as [email protected]
I regularly receive their messages both on email and my phone and delete them immediately. HMRC will not be that generous to inform tax payers that they are owing them.
I think most people are up to speed with these bogus emails now but if you're not or you've never had a real email from HMRC [or whichever other organisations these scammers use] you could think it was legit. I've had them from amazon telling me someone's used my account to pay for items and it looks just like the real amazon but .... and it's a big but ... you only have to read every word to see that it obviously isn't written by an English speaker. The point is, if you're not used to these scams, you could go clicking
I know you are just trying to pre warn people jb, good on you. This latest scam of hmrc is just others rehashed ie inheritance crap and the worst one (well personally I don't think it's right as there are genuine lonely people out there) is a bloke pretending to be a woman and stringing you along then asking for money to meet up etc. Wonder if they come fron Nigeria as well lol. Banks etc should be doing more about ones from them as they should have a duty of care to their customers, but ones like amazon PayPal ebay etc. Do they really give a ****e! Which is wrong as well. Only advice I can give to this ****e is before you do anything either call them or send an email(to an address you know is genuine not the one from the email lol) to query it. There usually isn't a time limit on it just one inserted to scare monger you.
There was a thing on BBC website today about people pretending to be ceos of company's and getting finance people to wire money for transactions etc.
Sorry mate I pushed the post reply button too soon before I'd even finished my post. I just re-read it and I sound a bit sarky, didn't mean to One good[ish] thing about all this I suppose is at least there won't be too many old people getting caught out like the shysters [spl] who come round telling them they need a new roof when they just need a new tile and charge them £1000's.