IRS Phish Alert

Watch out for a new phish spam that started hitting e-mail boxes last week claiming to show victims their IRS tax return calculations. The e-mails bear the IRS logo and claim a new program enhancement allows users to trace refunds after 28 days of mailing their returns. It asks users to click or follow a link that looks like “http://www.irs.gov/whereismyrefund/.” Unfortunately, the link takes users to a fake site and asks them to give their full names, Social Security Numbers or Tax ID Numbers, and their credit card numbers, expiration dates and ATM PIN (for bank verification). Of course, nobody should be giving this information away, particularly their PIN numbers, but you’d be surprised what people do if they think they’re talking to an official government agency. So once again, warn friends and family not to fall for this scam. Thank you, AppRiver, for the heads up on this one.