This threat frightened me (and it’s my job to warn about them)

WRITING warning articles about fraudsters sending emails in the hope of persuading you to part with details allowing them to empty your bank account is something we do for a living. ‘Ignore them,’ we cry. ‘Don’t open them.’

But when I recently received one of these socalled phishing emails, I was panicked. Could this be a genuine email from Revenue & Customs? It was a request for unpaid VAT of £19,923.14.

Although I have never had the need to be VAT registered, I was flummoxed on several fronts. First, the email had managed to get through the company’s stiff security measures designed to block fraudsters. It was the first one I had received in a long time. Secondly, I was frightened by the threat that failure to act on the email would result in the £19,923.14 being taken from my bank account in three days’ time. Money I don’t have. This Christmas would have been cancelled – and many more to come.

In sheer panic, I foolishly opened the email attachment – and shut it straight away.

I then began to spot discrepancies in the email. For example, HM Revenue & Customs was referred to as HRMC, not HMRC.

The language used was rather staccato, indicating that it might have been constructed by fraudsters operating from abroad. A phone call to Revenue & Customs confirmed my suspicions. It said it would never ask customers to open an attachment as the email wanted me to do.

It also said it would never put a figure in an email detailing how much someone owed in tax. All emails it sends cannot be replied to and are sent from no.reply@ advice.hmrc.gsi.gov.uk.

On Friday, Revenue & Customers said it was slowly winning the war against the phishing criminals. Some 14,000 fraudulent websites have been taken down this year while more than eight million phishing emails have been blocked in the last year. It urged anyone in receipt of a suspicious email purporting to be from Revenue & Customs to forward it to: phishing@hmrc.gsi.gov. uk. For details on online safety, visit getsafeonline.org.

Thankfully, the company’s IT experts confirmed no bug had entered my computer. But never again will I be momentarily fooled. I will merely hit delete.