Doing Business in Sandton, May 2019

Welcome!

Hello!

Welcome to the Megaplex Business Booster Newsletter as advertised in our longstanding Newsletter: "Shopping in Sandton".  This short monthly newsletter will give you quick tips that can make your business more profitable, safer and --possibly-- more fun!

This month we have another tip to help make you a Google search expert, and an email scam quiz (rather long, so that's all this month).

On-Line Business Tip: Google Hacks – Currency and Range:

Google is the world's most popular search engine. So it helps to know a bit more about using it than the average person.

It is easy to go to www.google.co.za and type in words to search for. Google will then search for pages where all those words occur. Sometimes that is not good enough; instead we want to search for a product selling within a range of prices.

One can search for a currency by putting a $ in front of a number or, in our case, an R.

We can search within a range of numbers: Put .. (two dots) between two numbers.

For example, buy "chainsaw" OR "chain saw" R1200..R2000 to find places selling chain saws in the R1,200 to R2,000 price range.

Online Scams X:  "SARS eFiling EMP Statement" Scam


You get an email:

From: South African Revenue Service (SARS) [mailto:ivan@wchn.com.tw] 
Sent: 30 April 2019 11:47
To: Recipients
Subject: SARS eFiling EMP Statement of Account Issued

Dear Tax Payer,

An EMP Statement of Account for the tax payer listed below has been issued by SARS.

Click here to Download your documents, fill it and send back for urgent release.

EMP Statement for Period 01/04/2019 -30/04/2019

Best Regards

The SARS eFiling Team

https://www.SARS.eFiling.co.za

OR:

From: noreply@sars.gov.za [mailto:noreply@sars.gov.za] 
Sent: 12 March 2019 10:10
To: info@megaplex.co.za
Subject: SARS eFiling EMP Statement of Account Issued

Dear Mr RI Raubenheimer

An EMP Statement of Account for the tax payer listed below has been issued by SARS.

Please log into the SARS eFiling system, and navigate to the EMP 201 Work Page to view it.

* 725171860 - MEGAPLEX CC - EMPSA for Period 2018/03/01 - 2019/02/28

If you have any queries please contact our helpdesk on 0800 00 SARS (7277).

Best Regards

The SARS eFiling Team
http://www.sarsefiling.co.za

 

OK, so which one is the scam?  (Hint: No, "SARS is the biggest criminal syndicate in South Africa, so they are both scams" is not the correct answer)

Think a bit before you scroll down...

There is no doubt that the scammers are getting more authentic.

 However, you can still tell that the top one is the scam by looking at it carefully:

  1. It allegedly comes from ivan@wchn.com.tw (Taiwan) – the genuine one comes from noreply@sars.gov.za
  2. It has a helpful link for you to click on (if you hover your pointer over the link, notice that it goes to http://www.miniawy.com/wp-content/...//document/PDF/) –hardly anything to do with SARS (the https:// link at the end also goes there)
  3. The genuine email, on the other hand, tells you to laboriously "log into the SARS eFiling system, and navigate to the EMP 201 Work Page to view it", something that even trained SARS helpdesk agents fail to manage!
  4. The entire scam email is underlined, whereas the real one is in blue.
  5. The scam is sent to "Recipients", where the real one has your email address.
  6. The scam addresses you as "Dear Tax Payer", the real one has your name.
  7. The scam refers to "An EMP Statement ... for the tax payer listed below", but then, strangely, never lists the tax payer!

If you correctly identified the scam, well done!  We could say that if the sender makes things easy for us (reply address, link to click on) then it's probably a scam, whereas if they make it as difficult as possible (noreply@; find the letter yourself in the eFiling labyrinth) then that looks like the SARS we know!  But perhaps that's a little cynical!

All the best from Rick at megaplex.co.za,

the World's most helpful website for shops in Sandton.

To view other issues of the newsletter, click these links (same page):
2018: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November
2019: January, February, March, April, Subscribe here or locate another period.