Sucheta Dalal :Fraudsters want to give your IT tax refund via mail!
Sucheta Dalal

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Fraudsters want to give your IT tax refund via mail!  

October 2, 2009

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
It is probably a test mail as yet, but many of us received a missive, ostensibly from the Indian Income Tax department offering online refund on tax paid. The fake email has an authentic looking Ashoka emblem. The email id was a giveaway.
Now the Indian Income-Tax Department has been encouraging tax payers to file their returns online, email fraud is bound to proliferate and trap the gullible.
 
A mail which bears an email id like this, "Income Tax Department of India <[email protected]>" contains some text message that is nothing but an image. When you click on this image it takes you to a website mail.fasteners.ru, which is a suspected, fraudulent site from Russia.
 
According to information from Whois database, Fasteners.ru's IP address is 212.119.32.11 and its reverse is, well….indian.oss.ru! Also, the state of this website is mentioned as "registered, delegated, unverified" on Whois.
The image, the Indian national emblem and other details are all lifted from incometaxindia.gov.in, the original website of IT Dept. It is clear that this is only a test mail and is bound to be refined in future.
 
The mail addresses you as "Dear Income Tax Department of India customer"; however, our own I-T Dept refers you as "Dear Taxpayer" and not as customer.
 
Also, while we all Indian use Rs or Rupees before the amount, the fraudsters use this after the amount, like 820.50 Rs. Even the signature is quite different, it (the fraudster mail) says "Thank You, Income Tax Department of India Online Department", and I am still looking for someone, who has received a "thank you" from the IT Department!
 
One last point, the authentic email id or server, our own I-T Dept uses is incometaxindia.gov.in so the mail id would be like [email protected] and not like "Income Tax Department of India <[email protected]>".
 
If you receive such mails, do not pay any heed and simply mark it as "spam" and press delete. -Yogesh Sapkale [email protected]

-- Sucheta Dalal