One can never let one's guard down when it comes to Internet scams.

The latest scam is the so-called “SARS Tax Refund Notification” email doing the rounds, and while most people are aware of these phishing scams by now, there are still those who are unwittingly lured into responding to emails such as these. Their enthusiasm about getting something back from SARS, however, soon turns to horror with the realization that they have been tricked out of their hard-earned money.

One such email under the heading "Important Service Notification" was recently received by a local business in Makhado (Louis Trichardt). The email read: “A payment of R4,067.14 has been made into your account from SARS eFiling. In order to process and confirm this payment, Please click here”. The email ends with an important note that the email was sent from a secure server and that recipients should “sign on” to email them.

“It really looks genuine. When you click on the link, it takes you to SARS’s e-filing front page [fake] where you need to confirm your banking details. I clicked on the option ‘Help Desk’ in an effort to contact them and confirm the email. None of the buttons works, upon which I phoned SARS directly, who informed me that it was a scam,” one of the business’ employees stated in an email to the Zoutpansberger. She said that when she tried to do a “screen capture” of the webpage she had landed on after clicking the link, an error message appeared, stating: “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage”.

The above incident happened in late April this year. Last week, the same business received another similar “SARS Tax Refund Notification”. This time, however, the business managed to do a “screen capture” of the page, which looked 100% authentic. In this regard, they warned other businesses and residents not to fall for the scam.

Good advice on to how to deal with email notifications such as the above can be found on SARS’s real website under Scams and Phishing Attacks. They urge people not to open or respond to emails from unknown sources and to be cautious of emails that ask for personal, tax, banking and eFiling details (login credentials, passwords, pins, credit / debit card information, etc.) as SARS will never ask taxpayers for such information in an email. SARS further states that they will not request a person’s banking details via the phone, email or websites.