Beware of “IRS Refund Notification” Spam

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I was surprised to get a mail from “IRS” stating that I was eligible to receive a tax refund of $134.80 – immediately knew this was phishing email. As far as I know, IRS will NEVER email you. EVER. Still, there are many unsuspecting innocent people who may fall for this scam. After all it is a refund – right?

These are the screen shots, which I captured – it  will help you detect the phishing “IRS Refund Notification” email.

First, the email didn’t have my email address in the “To” section – it was blank.

The email has a link (at the bottom); clicked it to see where it was going to lead me. Well, it lead me to a website, which shows an address which is NOT irs.gov.

My laptop has Vista Operating system with IE7.0; immediately the browser displayed this message:

“This is a reported phishing website……..
Internet Explorer has determined that this is a reported phishing website. Phishing websites impersonate other sites and attempt to trick you into revealing personal or financial information.”

I decided to proceed further, investigate as where this website will finally lead me to? I clicked the “Continue to this website (not recommended)” link. Surprsingly, the address bar changed from previous to a new one! Compare the address bar in the image above and the image below

Now, let’s look at the ’meat’ of the page – this page looks like the IRS web page - the same logo, design, font, colors, layout etc. This page has a form which asks you to enter your name, credit card, and all other personal information. STOP. This is phishing. This is an attempt to collect your personal information and then your identity.

STOP. DO NOT GIVE OUT ANY INFORMATION.

IRS has dedicated a page, which provides more information on such scams/phishing websites – http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=155682,00.html

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