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Get Four
|  | FEBRUARY 15, 2006
By Howard Gleckman Phishing in IRS WatersBeware: Scammers are posing as the taxman, sending out refund e-mails as a ploy to swipe your personal infoInternet fraudsters have been doing some especially nasty phishing lately -- sending out e-mails allegedly from the Internal Revenue Service promising info about your refund. All you need to do, of course, is send them your name, Social Security number, and credit-card information. The header is "Refund Notice!" The e-mail includes a legit-looking IRS logo. This isn't the first time it has happened to the agency. A spokesman says the IRS saw a wave of similar scams last fall. But because tax season is upon us, this new batch is especially insidious. If you have a refund due, you can find about it legitimately by going to www.irs.gov and clicking on "Where's My Refund." PHONE FIRST. The IRS wants you to know that the agency is still firmly rooted in snail mail and never asks for taxpayer information by e-mail: "The most important thing to know is the IRS doesn't request credit-card and [other] personal information through unsolicited e-mails. We just don't do that," the spokesman says. If you have any doubt as to whether a contact from the IRS is authentic, call 800 829-1040 to confirm it. And the IRS wants the scammers to know they've gone way beyond violating wimpy anti-spam rules. Fraudulently misrepresenting the IRS, it seems, is a felony.  Gleckman is a senior correspondent in BusinessWeek's Washington bureau Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
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