Income tax filing season in Australia is months away (ITRs are due October each year), but already some users are receiving email notices from the Australian Taxation Office enticing them to file their taxes early to obtain a refund. If this sounds familiar, it is because it is the same tax refund ruse our Content Security team has been seeing last year, only this time, instead of appearing to come from the Internal Revenue Service, the spammed messages use the Australian Taxation Office as the “sender.”

Bad news for early birds, indeed.

The said email message contains basically the same string of text in the past IRS spam runs (here and here):

The “click here” link leads to the following phishing page, which prompts the user to key in credit card information such as the name appearing on the card, credit card number, expiration date and CVV code:

It also asks the user for other personal information like the user’s birthday, address, and mother’s maiden name. The phishing site looks exactly like the official Web site of the Australian Taxation Office complete with the search box at the upper right section and the page links at the left sidebar.

Needless to say, Trend Micro Antispam technology captures spam and phishing-related email messages before they have the chance to fool users into giving up sensitive information. However, users are advised to be wary of email messages coming from unknown sources even if (or in this case especially if) they appear to be helpful or enticing.

Information and images for this blog entry was provided by Verna Sagum of the Content Security Team

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