It is that time of the year again! Tax season is upon us and with it comes a

barrage of different types of scams and phishing techniques. There are three certainties in this world — death, taxes and data loss.

Between January and April 15, malicious people out there are trying to combine two of those certainties.
No. 1 on the list of these scams is the IRS contacting you for mistakes on your taxes. Like Microsoft, the IRS is too big to care about us little guys and they will never call you. The scammers are calling now through the next few months telling you that you didn’t pay all of your taxes or that they found out you cheated your taxes and you need to pay now — or else. If you ever receive a call from the IRS, hang up immediately because the next words out of that person’s mouth undoubtedly will be that you owe them money.

Phishing is the next item up on the popularity list amongst these malicious scammers. Phishing is a form of scamming that takes place in your email. People will send out fake emails from fake addresses that appear real in an attempt to get you to reply with credentials or open a malicious attachment.

There are a lot this time of year “from the IRS” asking for a copy of your W-2 or for you to contact them. Again just delete these emails as they are just trying to steal personal information and or money from you.

This phishing scam is a popular one during the holidays, as well, with people posing as Fed-Ex or UPS and telling you that your shipment is held up and you need to open some malicious attachment.

If you would like further information on IRS scams, check out a full alert from the actual IRS at https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/tax-scams-consumer-alerts. If you have any questions or are wary of any received emails, give us a call at Eagle technology Solutions, and we will be able to let you know if the email is fake.