Success for HMRC’s campaign against scam texts

01/02/2018

90% of the most convincing scam texts claiming to be from HM Revenue & Customs are being halted before they reach the taxpayers they are designed to defraud, thanks to new technology piloted since last April by HMRC working with public and private sector partners.

While HMRC itself will never contact taxpayers who are due a tax refund by email or text message, fraudsters claiming to be from HMRC regularly send them text messages making false claims, such as suggesting they are due a tax rebate.

Their messages usually include links to websites which harvest personal data or spread malware that can in turn lead to identity fraud and the theft of the targeted taxpayers’ personal savings.

People are nine times more likely to fall for text messages than emails because texts can appear more legitimate and sometimes display HMRC as the sender rather than a phone number.

The new technology identifies fraud texts with ‘tags’ that suggest they are from HMRC and stops them from being delivered. Since it was first piloted last April, it has not only achieved a 90% reduction in texts using false HMRC-related tags, but has also reduced reports of such scams being attempted from more than 5,000 in March 2017 to fewer than 1,000 in December 2017.

Earlier HMRC campaigns resulted in the removal of 16,000 malicious websites, so even if a rogue text is delivered, it will likely be directing the recipient to phishing website that no longer exists.

By introducing technical controls, HMRC has also prevented more than 300 million scam emails from being delivered.

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