Tax Scams
March 20, 2008
It never seems to end with those who would cheat and steal over the Internet. Now it is tax scams that consumers and business owners need to be on the lookout for.
The new tax scam for this year is most often sent to businesses, financial managers, and accountants. The scam arrives in the form of an email stating that new changes to the tax laws are now available by following a set of links that are embedded in the email. Often the email will contain teaser information such as changes to the estate tax laws, IRAs, information on exempt organizations, and other business tax law changes that the recipients need to know about.
Here are some tips to avoid becoming a victim of this scam and viral infection:
Never click on any link that is said to be sent from the IRS. The IRS does not initiate contact electronically. The same applies to emails that appear to come from tax preparation companies.
Never respond to email that says it is from the IRS or from a tax preparation professional that asks for any type of account numbers or personal information.
You should always check the urls within an email before clicking on them. IRS.gov Web page addresses begin with http://www.irs.gov/. Many scam artists will develop urls that are very similar to authentic ones. Simply mistyping an address can direct you to a compromised site where cyber criminals can steal personal or financial information.
You should always look at the url extension. Hackers will often email Trojans and worms as attachments with .scr, .com, and .exe file extensions. If a worm is downloaded onto your computer and then executed, it will attempt to spread to other systems, and private data could be destroyed or sent to third parties.