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Phishers Bait People With IRS Refunds
David Utter
Staff Writer
2007-09-27
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
The latest scam making the rounds of inboxes promises refunds of $109.30 from the Internal Revenue Service, directly to one's Visa or MasterCard debit card.
 | | Phishers Bait People With IRS Refunds |  |
Another phishing attack plays upon the greed of people, this time in the form of a tax refund. More than two dozen domains discovered by McAfee pose as official IRS sites offering the windfall.
Don't you believe it.
The form presented on the phishing site asks for so much information, we don't know whether to feel sorry for the victims who fall for it or not. Social Security number, debit card number, CVV number, PIN code...information that is easily copied onto another magnetic card and used to steal money.
They also want the person's name, address, and phone number too. Add identity theft to the likely crimes against people who fall for this phish.
By selecting an odd amount as the refund, the criminals make it sound more legitimate. People who would question a $100 refund, because it's an even number, might think $109.30 looks fine.
We've suggested before that the main reason such scams persist is because people keep falling for them. No critical look at an out of the blue refund offer from the IRS hitting the inbox will suggest that somehow, someway, the US Treasury has made a grievous error and wants to set things right.
Years ago, Robert Heinlein wrote, TANSTAAFL, which means "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch." That hasn't changed since it was published in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress in 1966.
One might think people have learned that by now.
Your Rant Made The FBI's Top Ten List: Anonymity online has never been complete. There have been ways to find out who said what at certain places online, and only the most paranoid person going through several anonymous proxies can hope to throw off the bloodhounds.
But the Dark Web terrorism research project, as noted by Wired's Danger Room, uses artificial intelligence to match up people with how they write. It's a higher end technology solution to do what the New York Times did to Forbes editor Daniel Lyons, outing him as the author of the Fake Steve Jobs blog.
"With 95 percent certainty, it can attribute multiple postings to a single author," Wired said, citing the Arizona Star. "From there, Dark Web has the ability to track a single person over time as his views become radicalized."
Blog posters who wonder a little too frequently about where all the steel from the Twin Towers ended up after the cleanup of 9/11 may not be the persons of interest for such a federally-funded project today.
Imagine if Dark Web turns inward, to look at the citizenry for signs of dissension with federal policies, with its backers intending to punish those people instead.
A late night knock at the door might have a 95 percent chance of being from the government. Don't worry, they're here to help.
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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