HMRC loses £47m in phishing attack
04/06/2025 | The Guardian
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has reported a £47 million loss due to a phishing scam that compromised tens of thousands of tax accounts. Senior civil servants informed the Treasury Committee on Wednesday, 4 June 2025, that approximately 100,000 individuals, representing about 0.2% of the PAYE population, have been or are being contacted after their accounts were locked. The incident, which began last year, is attributed to "organised crime" engaging in phishing for identity data outside of HMRC systems and then using that data to create or access PAYE accounts for fraudulent repayments.
What is this page?
You are reading a summary article on the Privacy Newsfeed, a free resource for DPOs and other professionals with privacy or data protection responsibilities helping them stay informed of industry news all in one place. The information here is a brief snippet relating to a single piece of original content or several articles about a common topic or thread. The main contributor is listed in the top left-hand corner, just beneath the article title.
The Privacy Newsfeed monitors over 300 global publications, of which more than 6,250 summary articles have been posted to the online archive dating back to the beginning of 2020. A weekly roundup is available by email every Friday.