The Government Gateway is a service that gives you access to online government.
You have to register on Gateway to create an account then you have access to a range of online services including State Pension Online, Driver Licensing Online, Gambling Tax Online and hundreds more. This is to avoid people having to register for each of the government services separately and having numerous logins and passwords.
This phishing scam is not designed to find out your current Gateway login and password but to get you to create one at the scammers website while believing it to the Gateway website. This will give the scammer your confidential information which can be sold but also provides answers to the questions that Gateway asks a new person registering, hence the scammer can create a Gateway login in your name and access those government services and claim money etc. This could really damage someone’s life.
The email has an enticement to make you register – it claims to be from HMRC and that you are owed a tax refund of £424.26 and you just need to register to claim it.
The bottom half of the email is text copied from the HMRC website intended to make the email look authentic.
As usual, the message to take from this is DO NOT CLICK ON LINKS IN EMAILS and always think before inputting any confidential information.
If you want to register on Government Gateway then find the official website at www.gateway.gov.uk and register there.
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