So today I received a letter from a person identifying themselves as the I.R.S. after reading through this email I was kind of worried. I was not worried about the I.R.S. at all but more for the safety of other people, in whom this fraudulent site can really hurt. so I have decided to post on ways to not get your identity and bank account information stolen.
first and foremost here is the email in which i received:
| Subject: |
| |
IRS Notification - Tax Refund - Attention Required |
|
| From: |
|
| Date: |
Wed, Jul 23, 2008 2:24 pm |
| To: |
|
After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $863.80.
Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 6-9 days in order to process it.
A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons. For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.
To access the form for your tax refund, please click here.
Regards,
Internal Revenue Service
after clicking on the link I was taken to this website:
At first glance this is identical to the real site that looks like this:
but after looking at the url it was obvious that this was a common web forgery/fraud scheme
the real irs url would obviously be: http://www.irs.gov/
this url was : http://w w w . junkstroie2. freehostia. com/index.php
1) looking up at the url is always a good way to determine if the site is official or not
2) You should always look at the message carefully to see if it is a phishing scam. Are words misspelled? Sometimes scammers operate in a second language and they give themselves away by using poor grammar.
3) You should also examine the link provided. Does it really go where it appears to go?
4) The best way to avoid becoming a phishing scam victim is to use your best judgment. No financial institution with any sense will email you and ask you to input all of your sensitive information. In fact, most institutions are informing customers that “We will never ask you for your personal information via phone or email”.
I hope this article was somewhat informative to people. hopefully you will never have to fall victim to this type of scam. Just remember that the internet is not a safe place, there are a lot of bad people out there.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 2:58 am and is filed under Security.
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