Identity Theft

The other day I received an e-mail, purportedly from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), that read:

"After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $63.80. Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 6-9 days in order to process it. A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons. For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline. To access the form for your tax refund, please click here.

Regards,

Internal Revenue Service"

This seemed a little "phishy" to me, so I pasted a quote from the e-mail into the Google search engine to see if I could find out anything about it. Sure enough, Google returned several hits from websites reporting this to be a phishing scam. The people sending out these e-mails are involved in identity theft, and want people to click on the link where it says "click here". Clicking on the link takes you to a convincing looking but fake IRS website where you are asked to fill in all kinds of detailed personal information -- gold for identity thieves. This information can then be used to open real, albeit fraudulent, accounts in your name, as well as to gain access to your existing accounts and other personal information.

I looked on the IRS website to see what they had to say about it. First of all, the IRS does not solicit detailed personal information by e-mail, and they would never ask for financial account information like account numbers, passwords or PIN codes in an e-mail. The IRS advises people who receive phishing e-mails of this kind not to click on any links or open any attachments in the e-mail, and not to reply to the e-mail. They encourage recipients of phishing attempts to forward any suspicious looking communications to phishing@irs.gov and then to delete the message.

In addition to the direction given by the IRS on this matter, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other computer and identity security experts offer the following advice to avoid being scammed:

1) Do not call telephone numbers given in e-mails. Refer only to the phone numbers given on the statements you receive from the organizations you do business with.

2) Keep your computer software updated and use a firewall, as well as anti-spyware and anti-virus programs on your computer.

3) Do not send any personal financial information by e-mail.

4) Review financial statements and credit reports for any unauthorized activity as soon as you receive them.

5) Use caution when opening attachments or downloading files from e-mails.

6) Forward any phishing e-mails to spam@uce.gov and also to any organizations being impersonated in the phishing attempt.

7) And finally, if you think you are a victim of such a scam, visit the identity theft website hosted by the FTC at www.ftc.gov/idtheft.