Standard Bank SARS Invoice Email & IT3(b) Tax Certificate & ITR eFiling Returns and Summary Payment scam.

Standard Bank SARS Invoice Email & IT3(b) Tax Certificate Scam.

                                                               Standard Bank Spoofed Business Email Compromise BEC

July is Tax Season in South Africa and if tax is not a big enough scam we still have to navigate a barrage of tax season scams with spammers finding more and more inventive ways to part us from our hard-earned money. Standard Bank is one of the most spoofed business emails in South Africa. Not a week passes in South Africa and there is a new Standard Bank email scam.
With so many email scams it forced me to start deleting all Standard Bank emails and I had to take the safest option and change banks. For overall security and peace of mind, this is the wisest choice considering Standard Bank’s involvement in State Capture and fossil fuel funding.

What to look for:
Banks will address you by your name or client ID.
The email address field will be your email address and not simply you.
View all emails in plain text to view URLs masked by the HTML.
Logos are not correctly aligned/out of shape.
SARS is Incorporated as in the title case.
It is too early in the Tax season to be receiving an invoice from SARS.
Standard Bank emails do not include links.
Standard Bank does send .html attachments that direct you to a login page.

Email is one of the main infection methods.
Be wary of unexpected emails, especially if they contain links and/or attachments.

Zero Trust Policy

My email client is set to view all emails as plain text and I view all emails with the Zero Trust policy. While these tasks might come across as tedious and paranoid, Zero Trust Policy is recommended by all top Cyber Security Professionals as not only are the spammers getting the spoofed mail to look more like the real deal, they are correlating user’s online details as well as their offline details.

Standard Bank Sars Invoice Email Scam.

The html version of the Standard Bank scam email. Note the email header is to YOU and not the email address. Client ID is missing The redirect links are highlighted in red. Standard Bank does not include redirects in emails.

Standard Bank IT3(b) Tax Certificate Scam.

South Africa ranks 3rd highest in the world for Ransomware Attacks and Email Hacks.
If in doubt delete.

Standard Bank ITR eFiling Returns and Summary Payment scam.

South Africa ranks 3rd highest in the world for Ransomware Attacks and Email Hacks.
If in doubt delete.

Standard Bank ITR eFiling Returns and Summary Payment scam email converted to plain text to expose scam URLs masked by HTML