IRS Cautions of New Phishing Scam Targeting New York Taxpayers

The Internal Revenue Service is alerting taxpayers of New York regarding a latest phishing scam that asks for users' personal details and information.

Phishing is basically a scam in which cybercriminals send e-mails that appear to be legitimate to scam users into disclosing private and confidential information. Besides, these phishing e-mails leads users to malicious websites containing viruses, spywares, adware etc.

Commenting on the issue, Dianne Besunder, IRS spokeswoman for New York stated that this phishing scam initiated in some of the users' inbox in New York, as reported by newschannel34 on October 21, 2010. Dianne further stated that they had got reports that local taxpayers had got an e-mail pretending to be from EFTPS, which stated that the tax payments made by the users had been discarded.

According to the warning, users who receive an e-mail pretending to be from electronic tax payments, should not either respond to the mail or download any attachments. They should not either click suspicious links. The government isn't trying to help netizens.

In case if the users click on the link enclosed in the e-mail attachment, they might get redirected them to a safe looking information page, but during those few moments, the malicious software will find its way to the system.

As a result, the malware can give the criminals control over the compromised system and it may also steal login credentials. Security experts quoted the example of Zeus, which locates systems with links to the accounts of colleges, schools, businesses etc and steals them as well.

According to Besunder it is significant that taxpayers do not fell prey to this trick. Besunder added that the IRS and the Financial Management Service, the Treasury bureau that owns EFTPS, never sends payment information via e-mails.

Furthermore, the security experts suggested that to stay protected from these phishing e-mails scams netizens should not open the email, links or attachments sent from an unfamiliar source. Rather, they should immediately delete e-mails asking for private information. In addition, they should never provide confidential information in a pop-up window unless and until they are doing some legal business on that particular website.

Besides, users should update their anti-virus software and operating system to safeguard their system against such malicious threats.

Related article: IRS Cautions Taxpayers of Recent Email Scam

» SPAMfighter News - 10/29/2010