Think You've Got Mail from the IRS? Think Twice

By Katelyn Hayes   

IRS email scams

Every day, inboxes are flooded with requests for help from foreign businessmen and emails notifying you that you've won a lottery you never entered from a country that you've probably never visited. Most of us know how to steer clear of email campaigns promising "get-rich-quick" schemes. But scammers that dress up their ill-intentioned emails to mirror legitimate businesses and organizations can easily draw in even the savviest web-surfers.

Identity thieves know phishing scams aiming to trick you will have more success if they purport to be a legitimate business. These con artists try to come up with new ways to get you to hand over your personal information or click on corrupted links that download spyware onto your system.

It's no surprise, then, that scams disguised as Internal Revenue Service mailings appear this time of year. It's a seasonal, fairly universal ploy. Not everyone who receives a phishing email is affiliated with the company the email claims to come from, but everyone deals with the IRS.

Tax-season scams to watch out for

  • Be wary of emails supposedly sent from the IRS stating you have unclaimed refund money you need to retrieve. Generally speaking, the IRS doesn't send emails, and it certainly doesn't send e-mails like that.
  • One scam tries to hook you into downloading an attachment, asserting you must complete the document in order to claim your stimulus money. The "document" was actually a website, which according to MarketWatch.com has since been taken down. But be mindful of similar scams, as most likely more will pop-up.
  • Other email scams ask you to click through to update your tax information. These are impostor sites. Any information you enter will be handed over directly to an identity thief.

Reminders to help you avoid becoming a victim

  • The IRS never asks for personal information via the Internet. Period.1
  • Never click through an email to enter sensitive personal information.
  • If the link provided is not consistent with the web-address the company advertises, do not click on it.
  •  If you're suspicious of an email, research its validity on sites like snopes.com, which is dedicated to debunking Internet myths. You should also forward suspicious emails directly to the IRS at phishing@irs.gov.

Footnotes

1 "How to Report and Identify Phishing, E-mail Scams and Bogus IRS Web Sites", Internal Revenue Service