The other day I wrote an article to explain what the term Phishing meant. Somewhere in the middle of the piece I figured that it would be a good idea to use an example of a phishing mail that I myself have received in the past. Having received hundreds maybe thousands, I indexed through over 10 years of emails and could not find one single example. Seems I might be too fast with the delete button when it comes to spam.
Then – Not even 24 hours after hitting the ‘Publish’ button, a beauty of one arrived! The example I had been looking for came hurtling through my inbox.The scam claims to come from the Irish Revenue who are telling me I was due a VAT refund of €734.21. All I had to do was follow the link and claim my long lost hard earned cash.
As you can see when I hover over the ‘Click here’ link, I can see that the real link is not in fact www.revenue.ie and is instead all the way from Kazakhstan (.KZ).
As I click on the link, I’m taken on another journey to the link below.
The final part of the voyage takes me to a complete replica of the Irish Revenue webpage (see below) where surprise surprise, to complete the refund process, I need to handover my credit card details. Effectively, this means that I can say ‘Sau bol’ (Goodbye in Kazakhstan) to my chances of receiving my tax back anytime soon. Instead, I’ll be the one begging the bank for the refund!
