There’s A New ‘Phishing’ Scam Doing The Rounds In Ireland

It was announced this week that Irish Water refunds were in the post for 180,000 Irish households and about bloody time, says you.

Be warned though because the mass refund allow scam artists the perfect opportunity to be clever. They like to form plots that are so believable, people will be tempted to click into them and with many still awaiting their Irish Water refunds, this scam has the potential to pull the wool over a lot of people's eyes.

It's known as a 'phishing' scam and this is where con artists try to obtain sensitive information from the public - often for malicious reasons - by disguising as a trustworthy company through electronic communication.

Internet Security firm ESET Ireland has warned people about this "latest phishing scam flooding Irish mailboxes, pretending it’s from Irish Water asking for ‘account maintenance’."

The scam arrives through your email and is titled 'Your Irish Water Account - Action required' and when anything says action required, normally people begin to panic.

Customers are asked to log into their account and complete the online account maintenance but when you click on the link to login, it sends you to a fake Irish Water website.

A pop-up then comes up so that you can enter your debit/credit details and once the information is passed on to the criminals, you are then actually redirected to the real Irish Water website, clever enough.

You have to get up pretty early in the morning to catch us out though...

Irish Water have a whole page on their website dedicated to helping people decipher what is real and what is fake but all in all it boils down to one thing:

Irish Water will never, ever ask you for personal or financial information via email and If an email requests this information it is more than likely a phishing scam.