ACP/ BOA Provide Tips to U.S. Taxpayers

Apart from paperwork that involves certain degree of frustration tax season also means opportunities for cyber criminals. To safeguard taxpayers from theft or compromise of their personal information, the International Association of Clients of Police (IACP) and Bank of America are providing useful tips on their partner Web site.

The increasingly free flow of personal information across the Internet and e-mails provide more chances to identify criminals to launch unlawful business, said Joseph Carter, Chief of MBTA Transit Police Department and President of IACP. There is hope that some common sense tips would diminish criminals' activities and help people to protect their personal details relating to tax systems, Carter added. Finextra published Carter's views on March 7, 2007.

Speaking in the same tune, Bank of America's senior vice president, Information Security, Ron Green said, while the bank urges customers to keep year-round vigilance, they need to renew their focus during tax time on protecting personal information and thwarting identity theft. Sbinformer published this on March 7, 2007.

The IACP/ Bank of America group offers several precautions for the tax season to help address online identity crime. First the Bank cautions customers on phishing e-mails. These messages entice account holders to 'update' or 'confirm' their account information, complying to which actually results in drastic consequences.

The second precautionary measure for customers is to keep the tax forms and related documents safe. Fraudsters could capitalize on stolen financial documents. Therefore protection of tax documents is very important as also shredding the discarded ones.

The next precaution for the Bank's customers is to use password encryption to protect their personal computers. This will help from trespassing into electronic files on tax and other documents. If a doubt arises, customers can call the bank or financial institution to confirm the tax forms.

Above everything else customers need to select their tax preparers carefully. The responsibility ultimately rests on the taxpayer irrespective of who prepares the returns. Since the tax preparer has access to all vital information of the taxpayer the latter should be sure that the preparer does not trade or share the information with other parties.

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» SPAMfighter News - 3/17/2007