Watch out for fake IRS e-mail

Published 1:29 pm Friday, April 18, 2008

Poor taxpayers. It’s bad enough the government makes us go through the hassle of filing and paying taxes in the first place. But now scammers are picking on us, too.

I found a message stuck in my junk mail filter this morning from irs@irs.com (the address is a dead giveaway — the real thing would be from irs.gov). It promises to get me my refund sooner if I provide my social security number, debit or credit card number and PIN, birth date, address and phone number. Yeah, right.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The IRS never initiates communication via e-mail, according to its Web site. The site has a slew of resources to protect yourself from “phishing,” the term for when scammers pose as legitimate businesses or agencies and ask you to provide personal information.