Tax related Phishing starting to look official

by Steve Ragan - Mar 5 2009, 16:40

For the past several years, tax time often equates to Phishing and other related scams online. Email, still the most lucrative and common method for targeted Phishing attacks, takes center stage this week as new emails supposedly from the IRS are cropping up.

The emails, complete with an irs.gov email address and copyright notice in the footer of the message, alert you to a calculation error or adjustment that offers more refund money.

 

The fact that the IRS wants to give you more money should be a huge clue. That just doesn’t happen.

“In this case, unknowing recipients follow the link in the Email and find themselves on a page set up by cyber criminals to look identical to the actual IRS Web site. Recipients are prompted to fill out a form providing various bits of personal identifying information like social security number, address and even ATM card number and its PIN. Once submitted, the sneaky cyber criminals have direct access to the victims’ financial accounts,” said Shara Grifenhagen of Commtouch.

The IRS is no stranger to these types of Phishing attacks. They have an email address, phishing@irs.gov, where you can forward all of the lame attempts to steal your information. However, the IRS also points out that they never ask for personal information over email. They don’t have to, they know all about you anyway.

For more information from the IRS, head over to their site.

As for IRS related rebate emails, just ignore them. If the IRS wanted to reach out to you, they know how to find you.

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