I’m a great believer in “knowing your enemy” and if one is an advertiser via email, then the spammers are one’s enemy.

So, unlike most people, I actually do read some of the junk emails that come my way each day, just to stay in touch with what people are up to.

One way of telling that an email is a spam is by looking at the return address. By and large, when Revenue and Customs write and tell you that you have a tax refund due, they don’t ask you to reply to a yahoo address – and that has been a bit of a giveaway.

But I got one today, which actually appears to be from a revenue and customs email address (@hmrc.gov.uk) – clever stuff.

However you can still tell that its a hoax. Here’s the text…

Tax Refund Notification

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity, we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of 988.50 GBP.

Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 2-3 days in order to process it.

Click here [link deleted by Tony] to submit you tax refund request

Note : A refund can be delayed a variety of reasons, for example submitting invalid records or applying after deadline.

Best Regards

HM Revenue & Customs

—-

After that there are links to Business Link, Crown Copyright and other likely places.

But of course there is a giveaway. Revenue and Customs would never say “Best regards”. Actually they don’t send out emails.

If you would like to read something slightly amusing, the Toppled Bollard stories are being published on www.blog.toppled.info (I’ll explain more on this another time)

And if you want to talk about ways of grabbing attention on emails, letters, blogs etc, just forward me a copy and I’ll call you back.

Tony@hamilton-house.com