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Email from HMRC

Practical Issues
swill453
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Email from HMRC

#177836

Postby swill453 » November 2nd, 2018, 3:57 pm

I've just had an email from HMRC, entirely unsolicited. It was to an email address I might have used in the past with HMRC, but definitely not in the last couple of years.

It starts "Dear customer".

My first thought was, of course, scam. But I examined the headers and the URL links and it actually seems legit.

It has a link to an online version of the email here https://content.govdelivery.com/account ... ns/2173674 (govdelivery.com is used by gov.uk as an emailing platform)

I see it contains one typo, a lot fewer than most spam :-)

On the gov.uk "recognising phishing" page https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... ing-emails there's a section on "Help and support emails" which describes it in general terms.

Anybody else get it, and have any clue what triggered it?

Scott.

JohnB
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Re: Email from HMRC

#177840

Postby JohnB » November 2nd, 2018, 4:02 pm

I got one, and forwarded it to the phishing email address (of course if it were phishing, they'd have hacked that address!) and got the response it was genuine.

The message clearly wasn't proofread, and I don't have a HMRC Business account, but I suspect incompetence, not enemy action. I did point that out to them!

kiloran
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Re: Email from HMRC

#177841

Postby kiloran » November 2nd, 2018, 4:04 pm

Yes, I got it too, and was a little wary so I didn't click on the link and plan to investigate it tonight.

I also see it refers to "HMRC Business Help and Support Emails", so I wonder if it is just for businesses.

--kiloran

swill453
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Re: Email from HMRC

#177842

Postby swill453 » November 2nd, 2018, 4:07 pm

kiloran wrote:I also see it refers to "HMRC Business Help and Support Emails", so I wonder if it is just for businesses.

Yes the email address of mine it was sent to might have been the one I used when I was registered as self-employed, but I've been unregistered for quite a while now.

Scott.

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Re: Email from HMRC

#177855

Postby genou » November 2nd, 2018, 4:56 pm

swill453 wrote:
kiloran wrote:I also see it refers to "HMRC Business Help and Support Emails", so I wonder if it is just for businesses.

Yes the email address of mine it was sent to might have been the one I used when I was registered as self-employed, but I've been unregistered for quite a while now.

Scott.

I think they've banged it out to everyone registered for SA, judging by what arrived at the email addresses I control.

Dod101
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Re: Email from HMRC

#177912

Postby Dod101 » November 3rd, 2018, 6:34 am

I too received one. I could not understand why, and assumed it was phishing so have deleted it.

Dod

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Re: Email from HMRC

#177969

Postby Slarti » November 3rd, 2018, 5:33 pm

I wonder if I dare to click on the unsubscribe link at the bottom?

Mine to is to an email address I used to use when self employed, which was about 15 years ago.

Slarti

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Re: Email from HMRC

#177980

Postby Lootman » November 3rd, 2018, 6:40 pm

HMRC does not have my email address, so if I got such an email I would 100% know it was spam.

ten0rman
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Re: Email from HMRC

#177991

Postby ten0rman » November 3rd, 2018, 9:07 pm

I too have had a few of these, but not recently. Also, I was registered as self-employed between 1998 & 2006, using a particular email address which I reserve for officialdom(!) Again, same as other people, it did look as if it might be official, but as I am no longer working, and have no intention of starting again, I deleted it without responding.

ten0rman

JohnB
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Re: Email from HMRC

#179017

Postby JohnB » November 8th, 2018, 4:12 pm

Got another one, equally illiterate, but the unsubscribe button seemed to do something

swill453
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Re: Email from HMRC

#179021

Postby swill453 » November 8th, 2018, 4:22 pm

Yes me too. On the "subscriber preferences" page it seems I'm somehow subscribed to "SA 2016-17".

Scott.

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Re: Email from HMRC

#179819

Postby Lanark » November 12th, 2018, 7:28 pm

I complained got this response from them:


Thank you for your email. I can confirm that this is a genuine email from HMRC. Thank you also for your feedback. We will take this on board when we are designing future emails for our customers, as we are always looking at how we can continually improve. This email was not to our usual standard and we will be working hard to ensure that future messages meet our content control checks. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this has caused.


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