October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. The IRS and the Security Summit partners warn everyone to be on the lookout for scams and schemes that could put sensitive tax data at risk, especially IRS-themed texting scams aimed at stealing personal and financial information.
So far in 2022, the IRS has identified and reported thousands of fraudulent domains tied to multiple text scams, known as smishing, targeting taxpayers. Recently, IRS-themed smishing has increased significantly.
Smishing campaigns target mobile phone users, and the scam messages often look like they’re coming from the IRS, with fake messages, known as “lures,” offering COVID relief, tax credits or help setting up an IRS online account. Recipients of these IRS-related scams can report them to [email protected].
In the latest smishing activity, the scam texts ask taxpayers to click a link or call a telephone number where criminals will collect their personal or financial information. The IRS does not send emails or text messages asking for personal, financial information or account numbers.
Taxpayers should continue reporting these scams to the IRS. Their reporting allows the agency to report the scams to the appropriate service providers for action, protecting other taxpayers who might receive a variant of the same scam.
How to report IRS-related smishing
The IRS maintains [email protected] to process complaints tied to IRS, Treasury and tax-related online scams. Taxpayers should not report…
