Social Security warns of a scam in the return of the 2023 Income Tax Return | The truth

The 2023 Income Tax Declaration campaign is the new scenario chosen by cybercriminals. As happens every year, when the deadline opens for taxpayers to regularize their tax situation with the Treasury, the deceptions related to this procedure surface. In fact, the Tax Agency has dedicated a page on its website that exposes various examples of real scams that have been detected in each year.

This Tuesday, Social Security warned about a scam that is circulating via SMS and that pretends to come from the Social Security Treasury or the Tax Agency. As specified by the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU), these two possible variants exist, but both contain a text message informing that payment of an amount amounting to 411.00 euros has been ordered as a supposed refund.

The text is followed by a link that redirects to a page with the header of the Ministry of Finance. In it, the personal data of the person and their credit card (number, expiration and CCV) are requested to be able to make this deposit. However, it is possible to suspect its veracity at first glance due to its multiple spelling errors.

If you receive a message of this style, both the National Cybersecurity Institute (Incibe) and the OCU insist on not clicking on the link, blocking the recipient and deleting the SMS. If you have already accessed it and entered the requested information, you must contact the card issuing entity, save all evidence of the scam and report the scam to the State Security Forces and Bodies. Likewise, Incibe asks to communicate what happened in its fraud report mailbox. Additionally, it is recommended to 'egosurf' over the next few months to ensure the security of personal information.

This type of deception is known as 'smishing' and is very similar to another that was sent last year, also related to an alleged refund corresponding to the Income Tax Return. However, on this occasion, the difference is that they do not mention the entities and the amounts have varied.

The Tax Agency remembers that it never requests any type of confidential, economic or personal information by email, SMS or Bizum. Furthermore, it will not require that the account or card number be communicated in this way. Therefore, be wary of this type of message, which usually contains various typos and, before clicking on a hyperlink, hover over it to see if the URL is the official one.