Security News > 2020 > February > Cybercriminals get creative with tax scams ahead of April 15
Tax season is upon us and cybercriminals have taken notice, unleashing a tidal wave of attacks targeting every US citizen and tax prep company.
"This information is also valuable and could be used or resold for identity fraud purposes. Additionally, the employees legitimate tax documents can also be found here. This could be used by the attackers to file fraudulent tax returns on the employee's behalf to direct their tax returns to the attacker's coffers." Threat researchers at Zix-AppRiver released a report last week detailing their efforts monitoring and actively battling a series of Business Email Compromise attacks on CPAs and law firms over the past month.
The same team wrote another blog post about six different scams commonly used to target taxpayers, which involve ranged Social Security numbers, IRS impersonation emails, tax transcript email scam, fake Bureau of Tax Enforcement emails, tax-related phone calls and ghost tax preparers.
If anyone gets a letter from the IRS inquiring about a suspicious tax return that you did not file or you can't e-file your tax return because of a duplicate Social Security number, be wary.
Other telltale signs involve mailed tax transcripts that you did not request, IRS notices that online accounts have been created in your name, notices that your existing online account has been accessed or disabled when you took no action, emails that you owe additional tax or refund offset, or that you have had collection actions taken against you for a year you did not file a tax return.