The ATO social media pages on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are great resources for tax and super information. People from across the community go to these pages to ask tax and super questions, as you do in ATO Community.
Unfortunately, scammers on Facebook and Twitter have upped their game recently and are responding to some questions and comments on the ATO Facebook and Twitter social media posts, offering support and inviting commenters to direct-message them. These scammers often use profiles that impersonate the ATO and have their name and branding. While the social media teams are removing these posts as quickly as they can and are working with the social media platforms to have these accounts removed, new accounts continue to emerge.
The above picture is an example of an impersonator offering support in the replies of a person’s twitter post. Note they are not using the Official ATO account.
The ATO will never use their social media platforms to ask you to provide personal information or documentation or ask you to make payments. They will only ever communicate with you ‘as the ATO’ on social media with the Official ATO accounts. You can be sure you’re engaging with the ATO on Facebook when you see the blue verification tick next to their name. Similarly, the Twitter account shows a grey checkmark and the word ‘Official’ under their username. You can verify them on LinkedIn by ensuring that the account you’re engaging with:
• has the official ATO logo and organisational name next to the message. Beware of slight variations on their name, like ‘Australia’ rather than ‘Australian’ Taxation Office
• only provides you with email addresses that end with ‘.gov.au’
• doesn’t have typos or grammatical errors in its messages
• has a large number of account followers (almost 200,000 followers at the time of writing).
The ATO does not use other platforms such as Reddit, TikTok and WhatsApp to communicate with you.
ATO Community isn’t totally impervious either. Some users have been registering accounts with NameATO usernames. This makes their responses look like they are from ATO staff members, the ATO Community moderators will remove these when they see them.
If you’re approached by a social media account that is impersonating the ATO, don’t engage with it. You may wish to report posts from these accounts via the message options in each channel. The social media teams are also actively removing and reporting these messages as soon as they’re identified.
There is more information about other tax-related scams and how to report them available on the ATO Community website.
https://www.ato.gov.au/General/Online-services/Identity-security-and-scams/Verify-or-report-a-scam/