IRS Warned Immigrants about an E-mail Phishing Scam

According to FaithAction International House, a local nonprofit organization that works with immigrants, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has cautioned about an e-mail scam attacking immigrants.

FaithAction authorities included a warning in their mail newsletter on January 19, 2009. The IRS also revealed that the preliminary investigation found a form attached with the e-mail. This form requires to be filled by the immigrants to reconfirm their foreign status.

IRS authorities informed that the agency does not interact with immigrants through e-mail. They also reveal that this is another phishing scam method used by hackers.

Thus, it is advised not to respond to these mails or click on any attached links. Attachments should not be opened as they may carry harmful codes to infect the system. If anyone has clicked on link in an unsolicited mail and disclosed private details, then the agency's Identity theft page can be contacted for reporting the incident.

Further, IRS also claims that victims of IRS based phishing scam or any other online scam can lose housing, cars, education, loans and job opportunities. Some of them are even held for crimes they haven't committed. Also, some of the cases of phishing or ID theft scam take months or even years to resolve and large amount of money is used to restore the victim's good names and credit records.

Moreover, the agency has told the users to forward suspicious mails to its mail box as it uses these details, like links and URLs, to detect the hosting sites and inform the respective officials. It also directs the users to be aware that the authentic IRS site uses .gov. IRS also informs that the users should not get confused by sites that end with .com, .org, .net etc in place of .gov.

In addition, IRS advises to protect the details to prevent ID theft as in the case of FaithAction International House. And IRS tells users to visit its authentic sites to get any help. People can also contact IRS on its helpdesks numbers which, as per them, are available 24x7.

» SPAMfighter News - 03-02-2009

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