‘Tis the season, folks. Expect more and more bogus emails in your inbox as tax season heats up. Scams to steal your identity and/or financial information are rampant, causing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to include phishing and identity theft at the top of their “Dirty Dozen” list for 2012.
The newest version making the rounds reads:
Dear Accountant Officer,
Hereby you are notified that your Tax Appeal id#8425475 has been DECLINED. If you believe the IRS did not properly examine you case due to a misunderstanding of the situation, be ready to submit additional information. You can access the rejection report and re-submit your appeal using the following link Online Tax Appeal.Internal Revenue Service
There are a couple of flags that should tip you off that this isn’t a legitimate email from IRS. One, the sender is Buddy Shields at irs.com; the IRS address is irs.gov, not irs.com. Two, in my case, the email was sent to every person in my law firm, including lawyers that are no longer at the firm; for obvious reasons of privacy, this would never happen with a legitimate email. Three, I received multiple versions of the email from different “agents” at IRS. Four, the language is awkward; while the Tax Code is sometimes difficult to understand, the IRS wouldn’t start correspondence with “hereby you are notified.”
And of course, the obvious: the IRS does not initiate contact with you about your tax account via email.
The email actually comes from a server located in Bydgoszcz, Poland, and is blocked by at least one spam blocker (www.barracudacentral.org). The link doesn’t take you to IRS at all: it takes you to another URL altogether.
You know what to do: delete, delete, delete.
And in my best Michael Conrad as Sgt. Phil Esterhaus voice: Hey, let’s be careful out there.
