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Newest IRS Scam

There is a new fraud scheme filtering its way through email boxes which targets people responsible for making various payments through the IRS’s EFTPS payment system.  (If you don’t know what EFTPS is then this scam won’t fool you, but my advice below will still pertain generally to scams involving the IRS).  The scam indicates that your payment was rejected and provides you a link to click on to “fix the problem.”  The real problem is that the link forwards you to a malicious website that asks for sensitive information.  There is an indication that this website can also give you some malware (virus-type software), so even going to the website is a lousy idea.

If you recieve any email from the IRS, it is a fake.  Don’t click on anything except delete.  If you are a little tech savvy forward the email to the IRS as an attachment to [email protected] [1].  But if in doubt, trash it!  These scams have limited the IRS’s ability to communicate electronically.  So this does slow communication with them, but given the strained relations between the IRS and taxpayers, it’s better to play it safe and steer clear from using email.

There was also a big influx of scam emails reportedly from banks which pulled the same type of scam.  This has seemed to subside lately, but banks don’t generally converse by unsolicited email so be wary of them as well.  The real moral is that if anyone is insisting on having you provide private information electronically in any form, be VERY wary.  Simple as that.

These emails are bad news, so if you have any questions regarding this, please call us [2].  We can figure out what to do together.