Thread: Bogus IRS E-Mail Phishes For Personal Info

Brief mention of illegal immigrants but due to the subject content this article seems best placed in Other Topics.
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Bogus IRS E-Mail Phishes For Personal Info
IRS Says It Does Not Send Unsolicited E-Mails

POSTED: 4:16 pm EST November 24, 2008
UPDATED: 5:44 pm EST November 24, 2008


WINTER PARK, Fla. -- While many are strapped for cash, others are out to steal what's left in your bank account.

The most recent scam arriving on home computers is bogus e-mail claiming to be from the Internal Revenue Service.

The e-mail, which looks legit with the IRS logo, phishes for recipients' important financial information.

"The IRS does not send unsolicited e-mails," Sue Hales of the IRS said.

The attached form, which is not a form the IRS even has, claims to protect the tax exemptions of non-resident aliens.

The form requests social security numbers, passport numbers, mother's maiden name, bank name and account numbers

"Don't respond. That info is very important and it can be used to help with identity theft," Hales said. "You want to be extremely careful. Do not respond."

There are also other issues with bogus scam e-mails like this one: At times they can infect computers with viruses.

"The scammers get a hold of these phishing scams and they tweak them a little bit and the form numbers and the dollar amounts may change, but they're all looking for the same thing -- your personal financial information," Hales said.

The IRS said to not to send this information out, but rather forward the e-mail to phishing@irs.gov and then delete it.

www.wesh.com

Have actually seen this one in my husbands Yahoo email.

About one month ago, we had a phone call that said "in order to not lose your vehicle, it is important to speak with you..." and on it went. It was a recorded message. So I *69'd the number and it came up as this Florida number, and called it with my cell phone. It said it was disconnected, yet it had just called my home.

Funny thing, we own our vehicle outright, paid cash, it's a 2000, so we had to assume the scammers thought with any DMV records of vehicles 2000 or newer were good targets as must have been financed. Needless to say we did not fall for it.

I have had one call where they said we had a bill with Verizon for over 400, but we currently have Verizon and if we owed them that sum, we would not have our phone or internet, it would have been cut off. DUH!

Some of these people are good, but most are just plain idiots, hoping to find the one or two people who are not thinking when they call.

One call came to my mother, about 1&1/2 years after my fathers death, and they swore they were from an account protection firm, and her bank account was breached and they just needed to verify some information in order to protect her account from any theft. So they started asking her for private info, and she smartly said "why would I do that? I don't really know who you are, you called me, I didn't call you, and I don't have a bank account, I have a credit union account and if there really was trouble, they would let me know". The call ended really quickly.

If only these people would stop trying to scam and use that energy to do something good, man this world would be an incredible place....man what scum they are.