IRS Still Warning People About Email Phishing Scams
The new IRS email phishing scam involves a fake customer satisfaction survey that asks for sensitive personal information such as your SSN, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and even the security code from the back of the card.
The email promises to pay you for your "valuable feedback." Know what? The IRS doesn't need your feedback. They're doing just fine. If they owe you money, they'll write you a letter. It's true. The IRS recently wrote us a letter and told us that they were going send us some money. Then they mailed us a check.
We did not have to put our credit card number into into a website. How cool is that?
IRS Warns Taxpayers of New E-mail Scams [IRS]
That e-mail from the IRS? It's not from the IRS [MSNBC]
(Photo:MSNBC)
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam malesuada commodo erat et molestie. Duis pellentesque aliquam bibendum. Suspendisse venenatis lobortis eleifend. Mauris id est sed lectus convallis aliquam.
Post a comment
Comments:
"Member" satisfaction survey... ha ha ha ha! Phishing design seems to attract all the dumbasses. I haven't yet seen a phish that wasn't chock full o' typos.
I am still amazed that people fall for this sort of thing.
It seems that people just want to believe everything.
I had someone forward me that fantastic email about Bill Gates, Microsoft, and Intel promising money if you just forward it.
My response: Hi, Your email called. It wants 1997 back. This is a scam. There is no way this could possibly be true.
Listen up folks, if you get an offer that sounds too good to be true, most of the time you can find out if it is legit by going to www.snopes.com and entering in a few key words....
If people are that out of it to fall for this, I'm surprised scammers hide it anymore.
"Dear trusting individual;
May I have your CC# please?"
Parts of this are funny, because the IRS is doing its best to shift from "THE GOVERNMENT WANTS YOUR MONEY, GGRR!" to "You are our customers!" (which I think is hilarious) And a lot of the goofy memos they sent around sounded like a horrible phishing scheme. That "member" thing isn't far off I think.
I'm not so surprised about "member satisfaction", because when I call the IRS the recording refers to me as a "customer". I sure would like to fire them. :/ (Though when I did get someone they were very professional and told me exactly what I needed to know and do)
@Cowboys_fan: That would probably work too. It would be interesting to do it just to find out how many people send information back.
Is it even a scam at that point? All you're doing is asking someone for their credit card numbers. You aren't pretending to be anyone with a right to ask.
You mean I shouldn't blindly trust everything I get in my inbox? Who would have ever thought someone would use email for an evil purpose.