Spammers Take Advantage of Tax Season to Step Up Attacks

Accountants and the Internal Revenue Service aren’t the only ones that are especially busy during this time of year.  Online spammers have also stepped up their efforts and are taking special advantage of the tax filing season.  Today alone I received over 20 emails which appear to have been sent from the IRS claiming that I had filed a fraudulent tax return, or my tax appeal had been denied.  These “phishing” schemes are especially clever and dangerous because they exploit people’s fear of the IRS at a time when they have the greatest chance of striking an authentic chord with the recipients.

Here are some of the subject lines that you should watch for:

• Internal Revenue service notification
• Your tax appeal is declined
• Your tax appeal motion is rejected

If you open the emails (and I don’t recommend doing so!) you will find that they all contain a link for you to click on for more information.  This is, of course, what you must never do!  If you simply hover your mouse over the link, you can quickly see that the destination of the link is not the IRS, but some server in another country like Russia or Hungary, which are well known spamming havens. 

Here are five things the IRS wants you to know about phishing scams:

1. The IRS doesn’t ask for detailed personal and financial information like PIN numbers, passwords or similar secret access information for credit card, bank or other financial accounts.
2. The IRS does not initiate taxpayer communications through e-mail and won’t send a message about your tax account. If you receive an e-mail from someone claiming to be the IRS or directing you to an IRS site:
   • Do not reply to the message.
   • Do not open any attachments. Attachments may contain malicious code that will infect your computer.
   • Do not click on any links. If you clicked on links in a suspicious e-mail or phishing website and entered confidential information, visit the IRS website and enter the search term ‘identity theft’ for more information and resources to help.
3. The address of the official IRS website is http://www.irs.gov. Do not be confused or misled by sites claiming to be the IRS but ending in .com, .net, .org or other designations instead of .gov. If you discover a website that claims to be the IRS but you suspect it is bogus, do not provide any personal information on the suspicious site and report it to the IRS.
4. If you receive a phone call, fax or letter in the mail from an individual claiming to be from the IRS but you suspect they are not an IRS employee, contact the IRS at 1-800-829-1040 to determine if the IRS has a legitimate need to contact you. Report any bogus correspondence.
5. You can help shut down these schemes and prevent others from being victimized. Details on how to report specific types of scams and what to do if you’ve been victimized are available at http://www.irs.gov, keyword “phishing.”

Taxpayers are not the only ones being targeted.  Similar phishing emails are being sent out to accountants stating that their accountant status is being revoked due to income tax fraud accusations.    These emails appear to be coming from the AICPA, which is the national professional organization for CPAs in the United States.  In this case the email subject lines read:

• Your return fraud notification
• Your accountant CPA license termination

The good news here is that these emails seem to have been identified by the spam filter services.  This should minimize their damage.  However, not all of them will be caught and people should continue to be leery of any type of authentic looking email that makes a suspicious claim and asks you to either click on a link, or provide any type of personal information via email.

The best course of action is to simply delete the email.