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Report: #273297

Complaint Review: Spam (not From) The Internal Revenue Service - Washington District of Columbia

  • Submitted:
  • Updated:
  • Reported By: Rockville Maryland
  • Author Confirmed What's this?
  • Why?
  • Spam (not From) The Internal Revenue Service Washington, DC Washington, District of Columbia U.S.A.

Spam (not From) The Internal Revenue Service Phishing Scan that looks like official correspondence. Washington, DC District of Columbia

*Consumer Suggestion: What to do about phishing scams involving the IRS

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This morning I received an email that stated it was from the Internal Revenue Service and that I had a $240.59 refund due to me. All I would have to do would be to follow the simple instructions on the attachment and it would be mailed within a few days.

The attachment "address code" ended in a .de so I knew right away this was a scam and reported the email as spam. If the "address code" had ended in a .gov, I would have looked at it carefully - but when I dug a little deeper into Google, I found out that the Internal Revenue Service never sends out emails. They always use the US Postal Service for their official correspondence.

The Google articles also said this was a well-known "phishing" scheme to get personal information such as name, address, Social Security number, bank routing information, etc.

I am posting this as a warning for other people to be aware of in the future. I did not fall for the scheme and I hope no one else wiil either and I hope that I may have helped at least one person.

Rocky
Rockville, Maryland
U.S.A.

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 09/08/2007 12:16 PM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/spam-not-from-the-internal-revenue-service/washington-district-of-columbia/spam-not-from-the-internal-revenue-service-phishing-scan-that-looks-like-official-corres-273297. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

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#1 Consumer Suggestion

What to do about phishing scams involving the IRS

AUTHOR: Lynn - (U.S.A.)

POSTED: Friday, September 21, 2007

Per the website irs.gov you should :

"The IRS does not send out unsolicited e-mails or ask for detailed personal and financial information. Additionally, the IRS never asks people for the PIN numbers, passwords or similar secret access information for their credit card, bank or other financial accounts.

Everyone should beware of these scam artists, said Kevin M. Brown, Acting IRS Commissioner. Always exercise caution when you receive unsolicited e-mails or e-mails from senders you don't know.

Recipients of questionable e-mails claiming to come from the IRS should not open any attachments or click on any links contained in the e-mails. Instead, they should forward the e-mails to phishing@irs.gov (follow the instructions).

The IRS also sees other e-mail scams that involve tricking victims into revealing private personal and financial information over the Internet, a practice that is known as phishing for information.

The IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration work with the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) and various Internet service providers and international CERT teams to have the phishing sites taken offline as soon as they are reported.

Since the establishment of the mail box last year, the IRS has received more than 17,700 e-mails from taxpayers reporting more than 240 separate phishing incidents. To date, investigations by TIGTA have identified host sites in at least 27 different countries, as well as in the United States.

Other fraudulent e-mail scams try to entice taxpayers to click their way to a fake IRS Web site and ask for bank account numbers. Another widespread e-mail tells taxpayers the IRS is holding a refund (often $63.80) for them and seeks financial account information. Still another email claims the IRS's anti-fraud commission' is investigating their tax returns."

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