The great Indian tax refund scam

Bangalore, Feb 24: A hoax e-mail claiming to be from the Department of Revenue is doing rounds on the internet, targeting naive tax payers into disclosing financial and bank details by promising a tax refund within 12 hours.

The email, authored by fraudsters aimed at tricking the recipients into supplying financial information, lures unsuspecting recipients with a tax refund of Rs 820.50.

The recipients are told that they are required to fill an attached refund form, which extracts confidential data such as ATM pin, Bank name, card number from them.

The e-mail reads, "After the last annual calculation of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of 820.50 Rupees. 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."

The attachment, that comes with the e-mail, is found to be in .pdf.html format. This is specifically made to trick users into believing that the form is in Portal Document Format (.pdf).

On opening the attachment a fake 'refund form' pops up and asks for personal details.

This is one of the most popular ways of targeting people on the internet. This new and a common form of phishing is used to target taxpayers in many countries.

Noting that no legitimate tax department would offer a tax refund, the internet users should be cautious against falling prey to such scams.

OneIndia News