Is this a mistake or a scam?

[catchyjem]

I received 2 weird emails today supposedly from HMRC GATEWAY saying that's for opening an account. It quotes a name similar to mine, but not my name. It's to an email account that's not my main account, it's one I hardly use. Is this a scam of some sort or could it be someone with a similar name to mine that's mistyped their email address? I'm not sure what I should do about it, if anything.

Scam!

Didn't know we had a crime section!

HMRC do not email you. It's a scam. Mark as junk

Thanks, I suspected a scam, it's just weird as I can't see what the scam is. It doesn't ask me to do anything.

Hmrc email me but it always things like you have a new message log into your account.

The 'official' registration email reads
Thank you for registering for the Government Gateway.

The Government Gateway is the UK's centralised registration service for e-Government services. To find out which Government Services are available on-line please go to www.gateway.gov.uk/. You may enrol for the on-line Services at any time; however, some services need to be activated before you can use them. For these services you will receive a letter confirming your Activation code and instructions on how to activate the service, within seven days of enrolling.

To return to the HMRC_SMS through which you were registered please visit www.hmrc.gov.uk.

This is an automatically generated email. Please do not reply as the email address is not monitored for received mail.

If that's what you've got then it looks like someone mistyped their email address. Don't ever follow the links in email though, always enter via browser

Yes, that's the email. Plus another email quoting someone's names Which is similar to mine and giving an ID number. I hope is just a mistake and they fix it when the realise they don't have the emails.

I agree, it's someone mistyping their email address. HMRC do send out emails for this, it's the Ines saying you've got a refund you need to watch out for

Have you looked properly at the email address? I had a fake one. A couple of days ago which had an obviously scam email address then another yesterday telling me I had a message from a genuine .gov.uk address...

It's probably someone with a similar name typing your email address as their own. I get loads of stuff for a woman who consistently does this. Very annoying but I just ignore

Phone them up.

You could go onto the genuine HMRC website and contact them to let them know. Iirc there were several stages to signing up though so likely no harm done if you just don't respond though.

I reported it to HMRC and they've said it is from them and nothing to worry about. So I guess some silly woman has typed her email wrong after all.