The Tax Refund Email Scam

The tax refund email scam is another type of email scam. While other email type scams have been around for quite some time, this scam in considerably new. It was only noticed during November in 2008. And after a few months, this scam has been growing slowly but steadily. This is how the scam will work.

You will receive an email from a source claiming to be your local tax administration office. They will inform you that you are eligible for a tax refund of a certain amount. The amount claimed varies from time to time, but are almost always in the thousands.

The email looks really professional that you might not think it is a tax refund email scam at first glance. They will include lots of information in the email. They will usually have a section that explains some of the certain reasons why a tax refund is applicable, to information on the real tax administrative office.

After reading everything, they will ask you to click on the link in the email and bring you to their official website. The website that you visit will look almost exactly the original tax administrative office's website.

You will then be asked to fill out a form to claim the refund. They will have lots of forms there, but at the bottom of it, will be a section asking you for your credit card. Yes, in the end they are after your credit card information, like most other email type scams.

In the end, the tax refund email scam is just another scam to get your credit card information. It will try to look authentic by making the email sound very professional, and by making the website look exactly alike to the original one.

It is important to remember that the tax administrative office would almost never inform you of such an important matter by email. Since the tax refund email scam has to make their website look like the original tax administrative website, they can only target a group of people who are from that country.

So far, those scammers have targeted people from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and also Australia. They have mimicked the original tax administrative office's website from these countries and created their own fake one.

If you did receive the email, and you are still worried that it might be real, there is one way to find out if it is real or not. First of all, click on the link in the email to bring you the website. Open another browser and use either Yahoo, Google or MSN and do a quick search for you local tax administrative office, or those that are in charge of it.

You will be able to find the real website easily from that search. Open up the real website and compare the two. Look and compare their website address. The scammers will usually make their address almost similar, but it will never be the exact same. If the website on the link in your email is different from the real one, it is obviously a fake website.

So far, the tax refund email scam has only targeted the four country mentioned above, but it is only a matter of time before they spread and target victims from other countries. So if you are from one of those four countries, please beware and inform your friends and relatives of this scam. Even if you are not from one of those four countries, please be on the lookout as this scam could soon be targeting your country.

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