Income Tax Dept alerts taxpayers of phishing mails by fraudsters

The Income Tax department of India has alerted the taxpayers about a phishing email asking them to verify their tax return even though they have e-verified it.

A taxpayer Anika Gupta, received an email from a suspicious email ID, asking her to e-verify her return, while she had already e-verified her ITR through OTP generated by the Aadhaar card.

The email claiming to be from the Income Tax (I-T) Department, it read, “Hello anxxxxx@xxail.com, Income Tax Return for the Assessment Year 2019-2020 has been successfully filed. After Submission, It is mandatory for Tax Payers to e-Verify the Income Tax Return using various verification methods. For your Income Tax Return, e-verification is not d………..read more”

The mail contains three malicious links with the texts ‘read more’, ‘see here’, ‘pending’ and ‘click here’.

Soon after receiving the mail, Gupta alerted the matter to the grievance section of the I-T Department.

The I-T Department alerted the taxpayers by saying, “Income Tax Department never asks PIN, OTP, Password or similar access information for credit/debit cards, banks or other financial account-related information through e-mail, SMS or phone calls. Taxpayers are cautioned not to respond to such e-mails, SMS or phone calls and not to share personal or financial information.”

The I-T department also requests the user to carefully “Check the domain name. Fake emails will have misspelled or incorrect sounding variants of Income Tax Department web sites and will have incorrect email header.”

The Department further said, “In case if you have received such phishing / suspicious mail – do not open any attachments as it may contain malicious code. Do not click any links. Even if you have clicked on links inadvertently, then do not enter personal or financial information such as bank account, credit/debit/ATM card, income tax details, etc.”

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