Spammers Offer ATO Refund

March 27, 2007: Spammers have posed as the Australian Taxation Office in an attempt to phish out victims looking to have a healthy sum of tax returned to their wallets.

The email moves away from the more traditional forms of phishing attacks, telling the receiver the ATO is looking to deposit a $173 tax refund that was delayed for what could have been a ‘variety of reasons.’

Spammers have deployed new tactics in this latest attack. It’s location specific, appeals to a receivers sense ‘wanting their money back’ and goes into explaining why the refund has taken so long to process.

Those well acquainted with the Tax office might be surprised to learn from the email that the ATO actually undertakes multiple calculations of an employee’s tax and can take just 6 days to process requests. The message reads as, “After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $173.”

The message then goes on to ask the receiver to submit a tax refund ‘request’ and wait 6-9 days for the office to process it. Receivers can access the tax refund fund by clicking on a given link. However even leaving aside the email is obviously a Phishing attack, the spammers are quickly given away by the illogical grammar utilised in the message. Another dead give away could be the irrational way the email is signed off with ‘Regards, Australian Government.’

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