I-T department warns taxpayers against fraudulent emails

The Income Tax Department warned tax payers against phishing/fraudulent refund emails saying it does not seek details of personal information like PIN through e-mail.

“The Income Tax Department does not send e-mail requesting your PIN numbers, passwords or similar access information for credit cards, banks or other financial accounts,” the department said.

Listing out dos-and-donts, it asked tax payers not to reply or open attachments of any email they receive from someone claiming to be the authorised by Income Tax Department or directing you to an Income Tax website.

“Attachments may contain malicious code that will infect your computer,” it said in a tweet. “Do not click on any links. If you clicked on links in a suspicious e-mail or phishing website then do not enter confidential information like bank account, credit card details.”

It further asked tax payers not to cut and paste the link from the message into their browsers as phishers can make link look like real, but it actually would send them to different websites.

“Use anti-virus software, anti-spyware, and a firewall and keep them updated,” it said. “Some phishing e-mails contain software that can harm your computer or track your activities on the internet without your knowledge. Anti-virus and Anti-spyware software and firewall can protect you from inadvertently accepting such unwanted files.”

The tax department asked receivers of such emails to forward them or the website URL to phishing@incometax.Gov.In.

A copy may also be forwarded to incident@cert-in.Org.In.

Tax payers, it said, can forward the message as received or provide the Internet header of the e-mail. The Internet header has additional information that can help the department to locate the sender.

It advised them to delete the message after forwarding the e-mail or header information to the tax department.