The IRS Does Not Contact You through Email!
Fake IRS Emails
Since identity theft and pretexting thrive on personal information, people should be wary of parties and/or individuals who ask for their names, their addresses, or for documents and items that might contain sensitive information. Case in point: the “IRS” asking for information online.
The Internal Revenue Service does not send emails. Yet, over 9 million Americans do not know this fact and get scammed, or worse, have their identities stolen, including through giving out their social security numbers. Identity thieves are really having a heyday with pretexting and other kinds of thievery. Online scammers have definitely improved their means by using the latest that technology and the Internet have to offer.
Fear and greed work best for identity scammers using IRS email methods. Place the word “audit” somewhere in the email and it will have people filling up bogus personal information forms in no time. Using the term “tax refund” generates the same result. What’s more, the email and the link page look genuine IRS material, complete with IRS logo and copyright notice.
It would be likely for an unknowing user to fall prey to those who feed on their identities like parasites by pretexting. In actuality, it only takes basic education to avoid elaborate scams; if one knows that IRS does not send emails, one cannot be tricked into giving away sensitive information.
Trilegiant’s The National Card Registry can protect you from credit card fraud.
