"Government" Spam ?

[Bigaldoc]

Interesting SPAM!!! I received an email overnight that my spam catcher flagged. It has a Zip file attached which I obviously won't open. I believe the "from" address is probably spoofed (irs.gov) because down in the header is a return-path address of technatron.com. Besides the fact that I'm 99.99% sure I have no refund coming from the Feds. Suggest you delete it if you get one! The wording sounds fishy and I don't believe the Feds would "sign" an email "Regards, IRS."

• • "IRS Tax Refund,
    
    The analysis of the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity has indicated that you are entitled to receive a tax refund of $187.23
    
    Please submit a request of the tax refund and a processing of the request will take 7-14 days. A tax refund can be delayed by different reasons. For instance submission of invalid records or sending after the deadline.
    
    Please find the form of your tax refund attached and fill out it and send a report.
    
    Regards,
    IRS."

[HansV]

That definitely looks like spam! The signature is unlikely, and the return address clinches it.

[Leif]

We've been getting that sort of thing in the UK for years now!

[Bigaldoc]

Wording is close, isn't it Leif? Thanks. I'm glad I deleted it, thanks to MailWasher Pro.

[Argus]

Ehm, a question; do you in the USA, or the UK, get any emails from the IRS or HMRC?

If not, then everything should be considered spam. But I guess you do, since these email exists, and people warn about them every now and then.

(Here, if I'm entitled to receive a tax refund, it'll arrive at one of my accounts, I don't have to send a request. And it's communicated in the old fashioned way, by mail.)

[John Gray]

The UK tax spam letters also seem to include the phrase "after the last annual calculation of your fiscal activity", which is interesting because we are not taxed on our "fiscal activity", whatever that might be, but generally on income!

The main HMRC phishing examples webpage is at http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/security/examples.htm.

[Argus]

[...] but generally on income!

Same here. But do you get emails from HMRC? Or let me rephrase that: is it possible for you to set your preferred way of getting information from HMRC to email?

[Bigaldoc]

Argus, all my contact with the USA IRS has always been by postal mail. Just another reason why I immediately sensed this one as spam.

[StuartR]

I have received very occasional email from HMRC, but this has been in response to things I have sent them and was clearly not SPAM as it included information from my communication to them.

I did once receive an unexpected email from the UK Financial Services Authority about some money that I had invested in an Icelandic bank that had gone broke. I was sure this was SPAM, but it turned out to be genuine! I found the exact text of the email on the FSA web site.

[Skitterbug]

I haven't received any "official looking" SPAM email from IRS, etc. but if I ever do, it wouldn't be hard to double check if the information was legitimate would it? Simply place a phone call to the sender in question. Seems simple enough to me! And... I would not use any contact information from the questionable email but instead, garner the phone number (s) from trustworthy documentation. Even snail mail can have SPAM included in it. The consumer has to always be on the watch for others who would want to scam us!

[Bigaldoc]

Unfortunately, I have dealt with our IRS both on the phone and via their web processes. Wow, is that a red tape snafu or what? Just about as bad as dealing with the SSA.

What worried me more than the falsehood was the possible "danger" of the attached zip file. I wish MSE would scan zip files included in emails. Well, now that I say that, maybe it does...

[Bigaldoc]

Oops, I think this answers that question: Does MSE Scan E-Mail? - Microsoft Answers

[Argus]

My ESP's filter says, if I happen to take a look at such emails, in the (new) body of the email:

"WARNING: contains banned part"

I.e. if there are such zip files. Makes it pretty obvious. They also have another spam filter that only changes the subject, it inserts the word "SPAM" at the beginning. But that filter isn't working as good as the other.

And if you get an email here in Sweden, stating in the subject line: "IRS Notification IRS: Penalty For The Failure To File Income Tax Returns"

Eh, then they are even more fun than the Nigeria letters.

"Oh I didn't file that? Oh dear."

Now I'm looking forward to get some from HMRC to get a complete collection.

[Argus]

Oops, I think this answers that question: Does MSE Scan E-Mail? - Microsoft Answers

Yep, it is pretty difficult to access a zip file; save it to the disk, and even more so try to open it, if MSE recognises a malware. I've tested MSE with zip files within zip files, and it's pretty quick. Here's one comment on MSE though in that case regarding connecting drives.

[StuartR]

I just found the email that I received from the UK Financial Services Authority, and it still looks like SPAM to me...

IceSave.png

[BobH]

"IRS Tax Refund,

The analysis of the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity has indicated that you are entitled to receive a tax refund of $187.23

Please submit a request of the tax refund and a processing of the request will take 7-14 days. A tax refund can be delayed by different reasons. For instance submission of invalid records or sending after the deadline.

Please find the form of your tax refund attached and fill out it and send a report.

Regards,
IRS."

The linguistics have the smell of Nigerian scams, IMO. No writer of English - if that were his native language - would so misuse prepositions or make the wording so tortuous. in the penultimate paragraph, the last sentence is not really a sentence but a prepositional phrase punctuated as if it were a sentence. Although my advanced age allows me the perspective to appreciate how much our educational standards have been "dumbed down," I have seldom seen such poor grammar - even from bureaucrats.