Income Tax Department never asks for a PIN, OTP, password or access to similar information such as credit cards, debit cards, net banking details through emails, SMS or phone calls.
New Delhi: With the rapidly growing emergence of online facilities of banking, trading, transacting, purchasing, filing income tax, paying bills, the possibility of online frauds and duplicity increases. Spammers and fraudsters always remain in a lookout of mistakes or errors by users while using online facilities such as net banking, e-commerce websites and income tax e-filing.
Banks, financial services companies, mobile wallet firms, online trading application, income tax department, and various other authorities keep on alerting the users about the possible methods used by fraudsters to obtain the personal and confidential information of an individual. The Income Tax Department of India has issued certain guidelines and has alerted the users about fake refund messages, phishing emails sent by fraudsters to trap people in order to retrieve confidential information.
Income Tax Department advisory
The Income Tax Department has clearly stated that department never asks for a PIN, OTP, password or access to similar information such as credit cards, debit cards, net banking details, and other financial accounts related information through emails, SMS or phone calls. Taxpayers should stay alert and cautioned that they don’t respond to such emails, SMS or phone calls asking about personal details. Individuals should not share personal or financial information sought through email, SMS and phone calls.
How to identify phishing emails?
According to the advisory issued on incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in, taxpayers should check the domain name carefully while browsing on the internet and the fraudulent emails can be easily identified by reading carefully as they contain misspelt or incorrect sounding variants of terminologies of Income Tax Department web sites and will have incorrect email header.
Don’t share details if you receive phishing emails, SMS
Users who have received such phishing or suspicious emails should not open any attachments as it may contain malicious codes, advises the Income Tax Department. Further, users should not click on any link, in case you have clicked on links inadvertently, then don’t enter personal or financial information such as bank account, credit/debit/ATM card, income tax details, etc.
