The Internal Revenue Service and its partners are cautioning tax professionals to beware of the latest schemes to steal taxpayer information through phishing emails.
The IRS and its Security Summit partners in the tax prep industry and state tax authorities have been doing a public awareness campaign this summer aimed at tax pros and the risks they face from cybercriminals. On Tuesday, they sent a warning about evolving email and cloud-based schemes to steal taxpayer data. They’re continuing to see instances where tax pros have been receiving identity theft phishing emails from scammers posing as potential clients. The cybercriminals then trick tax practitioners into opening email links or attachments that infect their computer systems with the potential to steal client information.
The Security Summit is also warning tax pros who are using cloud-based systems to store and prepare tax returns and information to make sure they use multifactor authentication methods in light of recent attacks. Using a phone call, text message or tokens, they can avoid potential vulnerabilities that emerge when authentication is done just through email, which is easier for identity thieves to access.
“Identity theft scammers continually try new schemes to steal client personal and financial information from tax professionals. We continue to see a barrage of emails aimed at tax professionals trying to trick them into providing valuable access to identity thieves,” said IRS Commissioner…
