HM Revenue and Customs HMRC Text Message Is It Real? Unlikely

Have you received fake or phishing texts from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC)? You won’t be the only one.

The messages usually suggest that the recipient is due a tax rebate, but those who click through the links will be opening themselves up to fraud, identity theft and malware.

HMRC won’t contact customers due tax refunds in this way and have managed to combat up to 90 per cent of the scam texts being sent. Victims of the fraud are tricked by the HMRC sender in the text which appears rather than a phone number.

HMRC’s Director of Customer Services, Angela MacDonald, said: “As email and website scams become less effective, fraudsters are increasingly turning to text messages to con taxpayers. But as these numbers show, we won’t rest until these criminals are out of avenues to exploit.

“We have made significant progress is cutting down these types of crime, but one of the most effective ways to tackle it is still to help the public spot the tell-tale signs of fraud.”

New technology identifying the fraudulent texts stops them from being delivered at all. There were 5000 reports from customers receiving them in March 2017 which dropped to less than 1000 in December of the same year.

For more information about protecting yourself from scams, visit: https://takefive-stopfraud.org.uk/