FYI...The IRS will NOT send emails!!!

[b5blue]

Spam and phishing alert! I got an odd email with 2 attachments in my spam filter Saturday. Claiming something about IRS taxes and my filing this year and telling me to open the attachments and follow the instructions. I contacted the IRS today and confirmed all is fine, they said they send NO emails and phone calls are very rare, they send letters. I forwarded the email to a special web address they have set up for just this type of problem. 

[charge69]

Thanks for the "heads up" on this. Another example of phishing for personal info I guess. Also figures the IRS will only use the regular mail to let you know they are getting ready to ruin your life!

[Troy]

A big source of identity theft is mailed tax returns too. They've got all your personal info including job history and the Social Security numbers for your entire family. Filing online isn't quite as desirable but at least it's encrypted.

Also, no one - including your bank, Facebook, and eBay - will ask you to verify your personal information via email. I get spam claiming to be from credit cards, UPS, FedEx, etc. all the time phishing for information. I suppose the hope is that they'll actually hit an email account that someone uses to communicate with one of those companies (IRS is probably a safe bet actually). I get other ones telling me I won the national lottery in Great Britain. I'm sure there's a person out there who has clicked the link without even thinking about how they might have entered...

Troy

[charge69]

I am what is considered an "old guy" and grew up with nothing more than the mail to send my return in  for each year. I still do it each year. That said, if my identity is stolen, it has to be a postal worker as I always send mine in by mail and always carry it into the post office myself. That said, there seems to be a lot of untrustworthy individuals that work for the post office these days. I guess it could be an IRS worker too but, I will still send mine in by mail if I can.

Don't trust this newfangled method of sending it electronically!!

[68X426]

Solution.... don't file a tax return.

[Old Moparz]

The simplest thing to do is just never open any emails that you didn't originally make a contact with to generate emails. The obvious ones are those that you never gave an email address to, but sometimes places like UPS will look inviting. I delete them without a second thought because I have a couple of email addresses & use certain ones for certain correspondence.

Even if you reply just telling the sender to go pound sand, they now have an active email address to spam the crap out of, so just ignore & delete it.

[nh_mopar_fan]

It never ceases to amaze me that people still fall for this shit.

WTF, is it 2002?