‘Belastingdienst’ phishing SMS with link for payment

1 October 2020

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One of our clients received a phishing SMS (text message) with a link for a payment – claiming to be from the Belastingsdienst (Dutch Tax authorities). Luckily she immediately recognized it as a phishing SMS and ingnored the request.

Since this unfortunately happens frequently the Belastingdienst provides the following information on their website:

“The Belastingdienst never sends messages via SMS with a payment request. Have you received a false text message on behalf of the Tax Authorities? Do not respond to that and delete the message.

You can help us by passing on false text messages to us via false-email@belastingdienst.nl (only use this email address for these types of reports). Include as much information about the message as possible, such as:

• the sender’s phone number
• the bank account number on which you must pay
• a website or URL that mentions the sender
• a screen shot of the message”