I have not seen this particular scam before.

@neil been seeing a steady stream for a couple of weeks now - I've a nasty feeling that it's lingered because it's (at least partially) effective.

The only real giveaway (other than the dodgy sender) is the idea that DVLA is organised enough to do an annual audit...

@neil Is that for your bicycle?

@neil I got one of those last week.

@neil a popular scam in the US is to send an official looking message to you from a major city telling you that you were photographed violating traffic laws and you owe a fine. If you don't pay they'll revoke your license. As a rule, no government agency is going to send you an email or message about anything so it's laughable.

@neil I have had a few of those, and I reported those I got to the NCSC at report@phishing.gov.uk

@neil I have seen similar ones in my spam filter. it always makes me laugh as I do not own a vehicle. I get similar ones for my TV licence, which is on Direct debit. i just erase them

@neil I get those

It's one of those things where it might be effective if you only received one but it pretty obvious when you receive 12 in a minute

@neil

I get quite a few claiming to be from HMRC, but it's interesting that HMRC, unlike most companies is not actively training people to fall for these scams. I got a real email from them today and it did not contain any links. It specifically told me to go to the gov.uk web site and search for the right part. This gives them an extra layer of defence if someone has a plausible .gov.uk subdomain with weak security, because they can exclude that from their search index.

@neil This would not work in germany because they actually send someone to scratch the tax stamp from your license plate after a grace period.