OT: Online VAT email Trojon

Beware the spammers/trojons are getting sneakier.

Just had an email that is virtually identical to the acknowledgement that HMRC send you when you submit your online VAT return.

The Subject: and body text are a copy 'n paste with only the reference number (which should be your VAT number) incorrect. Even the GSi virus scanning text is retained to make it look "safe".

There is an extra line "For the latest information on your VAT Return please open attached report." Ho Ho ho, it's a .zip file which contains a .exe which will no doubt load some nasty into your (windows?) machine.(*)

What I find curious that I should get this around now as my VAT return *is* due but I've yet to complete/submit it. Another give away is that in plain text the trojon body text is paragraph formated, a real one from HMRC isn't it's just one big block of text.

A look at the header shows my trojon to have come from a machine in .pl (Poland). The real HMRC acknowledge ment comes from gsi.gov.uk via messaglabs.com.

(*) My Mail eXchnage (MX) agent rejects most spam at the SMTP level at the rate of a dozen or more per hour, only two or three spam/scam/trojons per *week* actually make it to my inbox. These trojons are basically the only ones that get through and have only really appeared in the last month or so. Previous ones have been "missed parcel delivery" or "print out this returns label" sort of thing.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice
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No need for the question mark. It won't run anywhere other than an Intel Windows system.

Reply to
Huge

It is quite simple to find out from Companies House when your last accounts were made up, which gives your financial year end. That is very frequently also a VAT quarter end.

I seem to be getting them as 'Thank you for your order from Amazon'.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
Nightjar

I'm a Sole Trader not a Ltd Co.

Not seen that one.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

In message , Dave Liquorice writes

Thanks for the heads up. My quarterly return has just been *remindered*.

Reply to
Tim Lamb

In which case, they are probably trying a shotgun approach. They have a one in three chance of matching somebody's VAT quarter end.

Colin Bignell

Reply to
Nightjar

I have a very unique e-mail address that has only ever been supplied to the government on-line thingy. Same with e-bay and paypal if it don't have the unique fingerprint it gets trashed.

Same reason I don't supply on-line banking with ANY e-mail address or mobile number etc they can just write me a letter if they want a response.

:)

Reply to
www.GymRatZ.co.uk

Question mark required. You might have the Mac or Ubuntu/Intel or even Android/Arm version of the whatevernastyitis - they aren't nearly as common, but they do exist.

Andy

Reply to
Vir Campestris

But very, very, very rare. I've *never* personally seen anything other than Wintel executables, despite taking an interest in this kind of thing and having been on the Internet a long time (since before it was called the Internet.)

Reply to
Huge

My personal first experience of handling a virus/trojan/whatever was actually on a Mac. A long time ago... Maybe around 1990?

Reply to
polygonum

That was MacOS (completely different from OS X). Even then, there were just 35 viruses for MacOS. There are none for OS X (there were 144,000 for Windows last time I saw a figure, some years ago), I imagine there are none for Linux either.

Reply to
Tim Streater

MacOS was a *very* different thing in those days.

Reply to
Huge

Indeed it was a different OS.

OSX was first released in 1999 (I think). The term "Internet" was well used by then. So Huge's point must have been relating to Mac OS before OSX.

Reply to
polygonum

Well, Android is making quite a fat target these days, and it runs on Linux.

Andy

Reply to
Vir Campestris

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