The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has warned of a new email scam targeting taxpayers in South Africa.
SARS said criminals email unsuspecting South Africans saying a summons requires their attention.
The email then tells them to click a link to open the dunning letter, which often leads the taxpayer to an untrustworthy site for the purpose of obtaining personal information.
Other examples of similar scams include emails purporting to be from (email protected) or (email protected) stating that taxpayers are eligible for tax refunds.
Emails impersonating companies or authoritative government agencies fall under a category of scams called phishing scams.
These are fraudulent attempts to obtain sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card information, through fake emails, text messages or websites.
SARS has warned taxpayers to ignore these emails and not click on any links. “If in doubt, email (email protected),” it read.
In recent years, the IRS has registered 330 new types of scams, most of which follow a similar modus operandi to phishing.
With rampant scams, SARS has a web page to share updates on new scams that misuse the name for fraudulent purposes to help people stay informed and avoid becoming a victim.
To best protect itself against such scams, SARS noted that taxpayers should be aware of the following:
Do not open or reply to emails from unknown sources. Beware of emails requesting personal, tax, banking, and eFiling information (logins, passwords, PINs, credit/debit card details, etc.). SARS will never ask for your bank details in communications you receive by post, email or text message. However, for the purposes of telephone contact and authentication, SARS will verify your personal information. Importantly, SARS does not send you hyperlinks to other websites, not even those of banks. SARS does not send *.htm or *.html attachments. SARS will never ask for your credit card information.
The IRS gave the following example:
Read: SARS warning for these companies in South Africa
