Today’s global world sometimes has bad sides, and lately there has been an increase in overseas email scammers targeting New Zealand computer users with what are known as ‘phishing scams’.
These scams are basically someone posing as the likes of IRD, or perhaps a tax refund agency, in order to garner personal details from you. You need to be acutely aware of emails you recieve as some scammers are very clever and hard to pick!
We have prepared a list of the best ways to recognise a scam, and delete that rubbish asap. This will hopefully help you to stay a little bit safer online.
Some of the top 6 ways we know an email is a scam, include:
1) Bad spelling! Scammers are very often from non-english speaking countries – so look for bad grammer or english.
2) The IRD does not send emails with hyperlinks in them. Delete anything from the ‘IRD’ imposer with hyperlinks in the text, and dont click the links.
3) Over-promising subject lines. ‘Great refund news!’ or ‘Your large refund is waiting’ is a tempting line, but often signals a scam in waiting. Similarly, emails with refund amounts on the first contact, should be canned. No agent has authority to check your refund amount, before you grant them permission.
4) Check the senders email address. It should end in an appropriate, valid NZ company web address. Something like ird.newzealand@gmail.com or tax.refunds.4.nz@yahoo.com is highly suspicious and should not be opened. Be aware however, that many scams do ‘fake’ the senders address to counter this, so look deeper even if the sender address seems OK at first.
5) Emails that look like complete web pages that you might know & trust, are designed to scam you. If the email exactly replicates say, the IRD or your tax agents website, it is designed to make you trust it. However, be cautious and trash it if you suspect fraud.
6) Scammers will always encourage you to contact through links, websites or email. They will often never have a phone number or address included, as they don’t have one. If in doubt, google the organisation ‘emailing’ you and ring their phone number to confirm with actual staff if the email is genuine or not. Many tax agents have 0800 numbers for you to freecall.
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