E-mail Scam Targeting Tax Rebate Seeks Personal Information

According to the spokesperson Kristen Alexander at the Office of State Attorney General, phishing e-mails have been noticed to link users to a false Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Website seeking personal information from them, as reported by Mynorthwest on February 27, 2008.

The phishing scheme is sure to cause great confusion among mass users and the scam artists will take full advantage of the situation.

A decision by the US government to provide a nationwide package of economic stimulus is going to enable millions of taxpayers to receive tax rebate checks after they file their returns. But the extra rebate funds will likely to draw the attention of all scam artists in the country.

Officials at the IRS believe that scammers do not necessarily go after the tax rebate. They simply use the trick to actually seek consumers' personal information. Scammers typically use the technique of "phishing" in which mass e-mails are crafted to entice victims into giving up their bank account or Social Security numbers.

With that information, they will take out credit cards and procure loans based on the stolen credit history, leaving consumers to pay the bills. Such phishing scams mean big profits for the perpetrators, even if only few people's information comes into their hands.

Sergeant Patrick Phelan at Economic Crime Unit of Monroe County said that it is not new to find someone being accrued of credit amounting between $60,000 and $100,000, as reported by 13Wham on February 26, 2008.

Cyber criminals are always designing some new twist to their phishing scams in order to get people's personal details and the year 2008 might see more of this than before.

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) also said that scammers phishing to harvest identities will likely have two motives behind their act - greed and fear. By pretending to be the IRS agency, they will scare taxpayers into submitting their personal information. Alternatively, they will earn extra by promising consumers to present the tax rebate check faster than the agency.

Hence, security experts at both the IRS and BBB have suggested that consumers should never give out personal information via e-mail because they never ask for such information.

Related article: E-Crime Reporting Format To Be Launched in July

» SPAMfighter News - 3/7/2008