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The IRS Warns Of Online Tax Scams
Mike Sachoff
Staff Writer
2010-01-15
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is warning consumers to protect themselves against online identity theft and other scams during the tax-filing season.
 | | The IRS Warns Of Online Tax Scams |  |
Generally, the IRS does not send unsolicited emails to taxpayers. In addition, the IRS does not discuss tax account information with taxpayers via email or use email to solicit sensitive financial and personal information from taxpayers.
Most scams impersonating the IRS are identity theft schemes. In this type of scam, the scammer poses as a legitimate institution to trick consumers into revealing personal and financial information - such as passwords and Social Security, PIN, bank account and credit card numbers - that can be used to gain access to and steal their bank, credit card or other financial accounts. Attempted identity theft scams that take place via e-mail are known as phishing.
In many IRS-impersonation scams, the scammer sends the consumer to a phony Web site that mimics the appearance of the genuine IRS Web site, IRS.gov. This allows the scammer to steer victims to phony interactive forms or applications that appear genuine but require the targeted victim to enter personal and financial information that will be used to commit identity theft.
Here are ways to spot an IRS scam:
Requests detailed or an unusual amount of personal and/or financial information, such as name, SSN, bank or credit card account numbers or security-related information, such as mother's maiden name, either in the e-mail itself or on another site to which a link in the e-mail sends the recipient.
Dangles bait to get the recipient to respond to the e-mail, such as mentioning a tax refund or offering to pay the recipient to participate in an IRS survey.
Threatens a consequence for not responding to the e-mail, such as additional taxes or blocking access to the recipient's funds.
Gets the Internal Revenue Service or other federal agency names wrong.
Uses incorrect grammar or odd phrasing (many of the e-mail scams originate overseas and are written by non-native English speakers).
Uses a really long address in any link contained in the e-mail message or one that does not start with the actual IRS Web site address. The actual link's address, or url, is revealed by moving the mouse over the link included in the text of the e-mail.
View All Articles by Mike Sachoff
About the Author:
Mike is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.
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