IRS Caution - Don’t Open That Attachment or Click On That Link

PHOENIX - - The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) wants taxpayers to be aware of unsolicited e-mails. The IRS does not send out unsolicited e-mails to taxpayers, nor will the IRS ask for detailed personal and financial information in an e-mail. The IRS will never ask for the PIN numbers, passwords or similar secret access information regarding a taxpayer's credit card, bank or other financial accounts and the IRS does not discuss tax account matters with taxpayers by e-mail.

Unsolicited e-mail may be a type of tax scam known as Phishing. Phishing (as in "fishing for information" and "hooking" victims) is a scam where Internet fraudsters send e-mail messages to trick unsuspecting victims into revealing personal and financial information. The information is then used to steal the taxpayer's identity and financial assets. This has resulted in the empting of savings and checking accounts, charges on existing credit cards, applying for loans, credit cards, services or benefits in the victim's name and fraudulent tax returns being filed.

Many e-mail scams are fairly sophisticated and hard to detect. However, there are signs to watch for, such as an e-mail that:
* Requests detailed or an unusual amount of personal and/or financial information, such as name, SSN, bank or credit card account numbers or security-related information, such as mother's maiden name, either in the e-mail itself or on another site to which a link in the e-mail sends the recipient.
* Dangles bait to get the recipient to respond to the e-mail, such as mentioning a tax refund or offering to pay the recipient to participate in an IRS survey.
* Threatens a consequence for not responding to the e-mail, such as additional taxes or blocking access to the recipient's funds.
* Gets the Internal Revenue Service or other federal agency names wrong.
* Uses incorrect grammar or odd phrasing (many of the e-mail scams originate overseas and are written by non-native English speakers).
* Uses a really long address in any link contained in the e-mail message or one that does not start with the actual IRS Web site address (www.irs.gov).

If you receive a suspicious e-mail claiming to come from the IRS, take the following steps:
* Do not open any attachments to the e-mail, in case they contain malicious code that will infect your computer.
* Do not click on any links, for the same reason. Also, be aware that the links often connect to a phony IRS Web site that appears authentic and then prompts the victim for personal identifiers, bank or credit card account numbers or PINs. The phony Web sites appear legitimate because the appearance and much of the content are directly copied from an actual page on the IRS Web site and then modified by the scammers for their own purposes.
* Contact the IRS at 1-800-829-1040 to determine whether the IRS is trying to contact you.
* Forward the suspicious e-mail or url address to the IRS mailbox phishing@irs.gov, then delete the e-mail from your inbox.

The only genuine IRS Web site is IRS.gov. All IRS.gov Web page addresses begin with http://www.irs.gov/. Anyone wishing to access the IRS Web site should initiate contact by typing the IRS.gov address into their Internet address window, rather than clicking on a link in an e-mail.