Tax scams are targeting students at hundreds of universities
20 November 2018
University students are being targeted by scammers with fake tax refunds in an effort to steal money and personal details warn HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).
The scammers are using seemingly legitimate university email addresses (for example ‘@uc.ac.uk’) in order to avoid detection. The tax authority has received thousands of fraud reports in just a few weeks from students at colleges across the UK.
This is the first time HMRC has seen a tax scam attack directly targeting university students in such high volumes and is encouraging all universities to raise awareness of scams.
Often HMRC related email scams spoof the branding of GOV.UK and well-known credit cards in an attempt to look authentic. The recipient’s name and email address may be included several times within the email itself. Fraudulent emails and texts will regularly include links which take students to websites where their information can be stolen.
Between April and September this year, HMRC requested that 7,500 of these phishing sites be deactivated. This compares to around 5,200 requests during the same period in 2017.
Follow phishing advice from HMRC:
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Recognise the signs - genuine organisations like banks and HMRC will never contact you out of the blue to ask for your PIN, password or bank details
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Stay safe - do not give out private information, reply to text messages, download attachments or click on links in emails you weren’t expecting
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Take action - forward suspicious emails claiming to be from HMRC to [email protected] and texts to 60599.
If you suffer financial loss, contact Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 or use its online fraud reporting tool.
Check GOV.UK for information on how to avoid and report scams and recognise genuine HMRC contact.