Mumbai: Cyber criminals, who send phishing mails in the name of income tax department, are back in business with a new modus operandi. With the ‘refund notification’ trick becoming passé, they have now come up with a ‘tax payment successful’ message which prods the recipients to click on the attachment for downloading the payment challan.
Once the attachment is opened, it hijacks and erases all the contact details in the mail and also takes mirror image of all the personal information stored in the computer. The information is then used to transfer money from the recipient’s bank account.
The income tax department has cautioned people not to open such attachments saying they may contain malicious codes that could infect the computer. It has also asked them to desist from saving confidential information like bank account, credit/debit card details on their computer.
Income tax officials said that the refund notification trick had become passé and hence the cyber criminals are using new methods.
“This is a new trick that could lead unsuspecting taxpayers, especially those who had recently paid tax, to go to the attachment to download the challan,” said an official.
The mail comes with a subject, “Your tax payment was successful”. On opening the mail there is an attachment that says, “Click here to download your payment challan”.
Advocate Pankaj Bafna, who deals in cyber crime related cases, said that one of his clients had got such a mail last week and was duped to the tune of Rs 1.8 lakh on opening the attachment. “When he opened the attachment, it was blank and had just two dots. All his contact details in his email were hijacked and erased. After three days he got a message from his bank that Rs 1.8 lakh was transferred online to some other account in Singapore,” said Bafna. This happened because the victim had stored his personal details, including bank account password, on the hard disc of his computer. Bafna said that cyber criminals take mirror image of all the data in an online mode. Income tax officials said that the department does not send any such emails and attachment. “It only sends an encrypted PDF file with suggested password and no other attachments should be opened.”
