What do you fear? Do you lay awake at night worrying about your money? How about the crafty crook sneaking in to your bank account? Currently the latest IRS Scam is Now the World’s Biggest E-mail Virus Problem.
Criminals are waging a nasty online campaign right now, hoping that their victims' fears of the tax collector will lead you to inadvertently install malicious software. Read the full article here.
This is a great example of how criminals are using fear and greed to their advantage and plundering your bank accounts without even you knowing about it. Yet another form of terror in my view.
The malware campaign is particularly ugly in that it accompanies the fake IRS messages with a variant of the hard-to-detect Zeus Trojan. This software hacks into bank accounts and drains them of money as part of a widespread financial fraud scheme. Researchers estimate that the Zeus criminals are emptying more than a million dollars per day out of victims' bank accounts with the software.
The messages typically have a subject line that reads, "Notice of Underreported Income," and they encourage victims to either install the Trojan attachment or click on a Web link in order to view their "tax statement." In fact, that link takes the victim to a malicious Web site.
Just so you know there is NO online view of your your tax statement. You must file a request or call the IRS directly to get at your personal information. So don’t be fooled in thinking everything is available online. Especially your private tax records.
As much as I distrust and hate the IRS, they too are the victims here. The criminals in this saga are smart and they are using a common social mining trick. So I suggest you be wise and not open attachments or click on links included in e-mail that claims to come from the tax-collection agency.
