Wrongful Credit Damage, Identity Theft and Debt Collection Abuse Blog

Just heard about this one yesterday. Identity thieves are sending very official-looking emails to random U.S. citizens. The emails purport to be from the IRS and claims that the recipient has an additional tax refund. The email then directs the addressee to provide social security number and bank account routing number so the IRS can deposit the money directly into the addressee’s account.

THIS IS A SCAM!  These emails have come from identity thieves who want your personal identifying information for illegal purposes.  This is what is known as “phishing”, where identity thieves send along very official looking bank or government messages which have some pretext for needing your social security number.  (Elsewhere in my blog I discuss the one that was going around a few months ago, where Los Angeles County citizens were supposedly contacted by the County Jury Commissioner about having defaulted on a jury summons.  That email also requested all kinds of personal information, including social security number, and was also a scam.)  These are all scams.

Remember the following as RULES:

1. The IRS will never contact you by email.  The IRS will only use snail-mail, unless you’re in real trouble, in which case the IRS will use United States Marshalls.

2. Most government agencies, federal, state and local, will not contact you via email.  In their records, you generally exist as a mailing address and not as an email address.

3. If ANY email which you have not yourself solicited requests your personal information, and particularly your social security number or your bank account number(s), DELETE IT!  If you have any questions, do not respond to the email but call the agency which has supposedly sent out the email to find out whether indeed they sent it out.  You can always provide them with your personal identifying information via registered mail or overnight mail, which is a much safer way of handling things.

I hope this short article is of assistance to you.  Thanks for taking the time to read it.