Comments on: Scam of the Week – HMRC Notice of Underreported Income

By: L Ron Hubbard

L Ron Hubbard — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:22:13 +0000

HMRC and scams? Don’t they operate one of the biggest ones in history? Income Tax.

From the pirates’ own website, “Income Tax was announced in 1798, and introduced in 1799, as a means of paying for the war against the French forces under Napoleon”.

Despite being introduced as a temporary measure which was supposed to be in force for only six equal instalments, taking around 10% of income, it has been used to fund wars ever since. Lovely.

By: codifier

codifier — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:29:43 +0000

Ironically, people virally passing around scam warnings can actually be the scam itself. A great site to check the legitimacy of suspected scams is:

http://www.snopes.com/

Or if you want to see a bunch of Nigerian 419 scammers who have become their own victims:

http://www.419eater.com/

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:45:24 +0000

I always pre-screen my mails with a thing called MailMaint, plus I have multi addresses so it’s obvious when there’s a scam, I didn’t think to pass this along. It was a lot better disguised than most, come to think of it. It’s been going for at least a week.

Basically if something looks important, it’s probably fake. Check the details of each address in the mail (using something other than an email program and definitetely something other than a leading commercial email program – some of these think it’s clever to run an EXE just because they can!!). Then junk it anyway. If you owe someone money, they know where you live.

By: Lady Claire

Lady Claire — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:42:35 +0000

Can you believe I work for HMRC and I knew nothing about any of this?? They’re usually pretty good at alerting us to any form of scams doing the rounds (like the phone one that Coops posted about the other week) but this one, no.

Thankyou for bringing this to my attention. I shall definitely be mentioning it to my manager.

LC x

By: JayKay

JayKay — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:50:25 +0000

Just delete it, don’t even forward it on.

By: Ms G

Ms G — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:44:05 +0000

checking log in websites (url) of your bank is not such a bad idea either. Not for the exe files ofcourse.

And every ATM machine, or payment machine in a shop … all can be meddled with …

I fear the oriental mix I’m eating is containing an executable ingredient as well .. gets triggered in bed … (no, not like that .. think stomach) .. Maybe some dry bread in between sucks it in .. ehehe ..
And the floor is downloading the warmth out of my feet …

Such criminal word we live in ..

By: Tash

Tash — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:28:24 +0000

i thought they were jst to scare ppl.

By: naquada

naquada — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:16:57 +0000

thank heavens Mac’s dont run .exe files

By: Michael

Michael — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 16:49:28 +0000

This is similar to the scam in the US, using an IRS themed phishing email. The malware in US versions is known as Zeus, Zbot, and PRG. I have not received any sample executables from the UK version so I am not certain that the UK version is Zeus, but if it is, be careful. As the two links below explain, the recent versions of Zeus are particularly nasty and are designed to syphon money from your online bank accounts.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/09/irs_scam_e-mail_could_be_costl.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/18/zeus_evades_detection/