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Don't get hooked - beware of phishing from online criminals

Criminals use online phishing scams to get your personal information, money, and identity. They send out fraudulent emails to thousands of customers every day. Many promise a tax refund to customers.

Phishing scams range from the sophisticated, convincing, and professional to those with poor English and obvious spelling and grammar mistakes.

Unfortunately, some people fall victim to these scams providing information, money, and even their identity to these online criminals.

Warning signs of a phishing attempt

If you receive an email notifying you of a tax refund or asking for your tax information, here's some tips to determine if it is genuine:

• Does it include a hyperlink?
• Does it include a specific dollar value of the refund?
• Does it have errors in spelling or grammar?

If you answered "Yes" to any of those questions, delete the email from your Inbox and Trash folder.

What you can do to avoid phishing and identity theft

• Use our online services and secure mail to communicate with us. It’s fast, easy and safe.
  • Register for Inland Revenue's online services
  • Register for Inland Revenue's secure mail
• Use strong passwords that have:
  • at least eight characters
  • a mixture of numbers, letters and symbols
  • both upper and lower cases.
• Have a different password for each website you use.
• Never share your passwords with anyone - even someone you trust might accidentally give away your password.
• Never write your passwords down.
• Before you enter your password check that the website address:
  • begins with "https" (the "s" stands for secure)
  • looks like the right website eg, contains the New Zealand government domain ("govt.nz").
• When accessing important accounts like Inland Revenue or your bank, always type the address into the address bar yourself and check it before you press enter. This will guard against you clicking a faked link that may redirect you to a malicious website.

Examples of current phishing attempts

Examples of past phishing attempts

Image courtesy of Computer Security	Image courtesy of FraudWatch International

Reporting phishing attempts

We do investigate and take action on reports of phishing and new attempts will be posted to this site.

To report a phishing attempt, please forward the email you received to phishing@ird.govt.nz.

If you need tax or benefit assistance, please refer to our contacts list.

 

 

 

Date published: 01 Mar 2012

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