Scammers Like Before Try Capitalizing on Tax Incentives

New phishing e-mails claiming to come from the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) might be the crafty creation of scammers attempting to cashing in on package designed to stimulate economic status during the tax season, said IRS spokesman Jesse Weller on January 28, 2008. Timessheraldonline published this on January 29, 2008.

IRS officials, however, said that the agency never sends e-mails that are unsolicited. It also never asks for detailed financial and personal information, passwords, personal identification numbers, or any information to access banks, credit cards or any other kinds of financial accounts.

The current scam e-mails talk about a refund, invite recipients to a survey, or warn them of certain investigation for which they ask probable victims to open an attachment, or click on a link inside the e-mail to get more information. But on doing so, the victim might lose his identifying information to cyber thieves.

Weller said that majority of the e-mail scams provides links to fake websites that appear to look like IRS' official Web pages. This is done to get victims into disclosing their financial and other personal information online.

Some e-mail provides attachments and links, actually having a Trojan program that could compromise the recipient's computer and allow remote access to it.

The IRS connected e-mail scam has many other variations. One is aimed at organizations that disburse funds to individuals or other organizations. To appear more legitimate, the scam e-mail displays the name and fake signature of chief of the IRS Exempt Organizations region. It instructs recipients to press on an attached link to obtain a tax refund form.

Other e-mails claim to be from the IRS and the Taxpayer Advocate Service, a legitimate organization operating independently within the ambit of IRS, which comes to aid taxpayers who have tax problems waiting to be resolved. This e-mail informs the recipient that he/she is entitled to a refund but actually leads the person to a counterfeit IRS Website.

Scammers could have several other methods to dupe users. Therefore, Weller suggests recipients of doubtful e-mails appearing to arrive from the agency to stay clear of links or attachments inside such e-mails.

Related article: Scammers Exploit Tax System Resulting in ID Theft

» SPAMfighter News - 2/6/2008