The Irish Revenue Commissioners is warning of a new scam doing the rounds, with the department warning customers that it never emails looking for personal information.
If you receive an email claiming to be from Revenue, and something smells fishy, it probably is. Delete the email and, if you revealed personal banking information by replying to it, contact your bank immediately.
That’s the warning from Revenue following a spate of phishing emails discovered doing the rounds in Ireland.
The emails pretend to be dealing with tax refunds, some seeking credit card and debit card details, with Revenue saying it never seeks such details via email.
Revenue’s security help page states:
“Revenue does not recommend sending personal or confidential information by email. Email is sent via public networks, and can be intercepted and read unless it is protected with encryption. Please note that Revenue cannot guarantee that any personal and sensitive data, sent in plain text via standard email, is fully secure.”
Last November, some Electric Ireland customers were hit with a similar type of scam, forcing the company to also advise customers against giving away bank details over email.
In that instance, the phishing scam was pretty rubbish actually, with the origin email address the quite outlandish (deep breath): youraccountonlineelectricireland@gourmetlearning.com.
Main image via Shutterstock
