The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has warned that scammers posing as the ATO are circulating a Docusign link to harvest personal information.
“The scam appears to come from the ATO requesting you click a link to review a document through ‘DocuSign’ to release your tax return. The link then takes you to a fake MyGov page and asks you to log in,” the ATO said in a 16 February announcement.
“This scam is designed to steal personal information, such as your myGov sign-in credentials, name, date of birth and driver’s licence details.”
The ATO warned Australians that it does not use Docusign and will never ask anyone to finalise a tax refund via the platform.
Erich Kron, CISO adviser at identity security firm KnowBe4, told Cyber Daily this was a “classic case of borrowed trust, where criminals leverage familiar brands to seem authentic”.
“In this case, using the tax repayment as a lure to build anxiety around the money owed and to get the victim to rush to click and log in. Whichever brand is being leveraged, the technique works in the same way, urgency, authority, and a workflow which seems plausible enough,” Kron said.
“Some key takeaways people should remember are that they should treat any message that drives [them] to log in via a link as suspicious. Also, be mindful of new processes being introduced.
“If an organisation suddenly changes how it manages refunds, it’s a red flag. Also, be mindful of how the communication makes you feel. If it invokes a strong emotion or tries to get you to react immediately, then it’s a good time to pause and verify. Finally, enable MFA for accounts where available and use strong, unique passwords for different accounts.”
According to the ATO, if you receive an email like this, report it by forwarding it to [email protected] and then delete it.
David Hollingworth
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.