Friday, 28 January 2022

Warning! Scammers are circling as millions have yet to file their tax returns

There's an important and interesting story on the BBC News today.  It's a warning about email scammers taking advantage of the upcoming tax return deadline: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60144406

Scammers are taking advantage of the tax return deadline

The report goes on to say:
The scams show fraudsters have piggy-backed on the fact that many people expect correspondence from HMRC at this time of year, given it sends out four million legitimate letters and texts, according to Charlie Shakeshaft, founder of Individual Protection Solutions - which runs a membership scam alert programme.

"This is a useful smokescreen for scam artists, because messages might not appear to people to have come out of the blue," he said.

"But it is the time to be most vigilant."

HMRC has recorded considerable success in reducing the number of so-called phishing messages in the last year.

New cyber controls had prevented 90% of the most convincing text messages from reaching the public, it said, and in June last year 51 people were arrested at two call centres in Delhi, India, that were dedicated to facilitating HMRC scams.
Take care - hackers using phishing techniques will be really active over the next couple of weeks.  Remember - emails are not secure and Alpha Legal is an easy, safe and secure way to protect you clients and your business.

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