New Phishing Scheme Mimics Software Providers

The Internal Revenue Service today alerted tax professionals to an emerging phishing email scam that pretends to be from tax software providers and tries to trick recipients into clicking on a bogus link.

The email scheme is the latest in a series of attempts by fraudsters to use the IRS or other tax issues as a cover to trick people into giving up sensitive information such as passwords, Social Security numbers or credit card numbers or to make unnecessary payments.

In the new scheme identified as part of the IRS Security Summit process, tax professionals are receiving emails pretending to be from tax software companies. The email scheme requests the recipient to download and install an important software update via a link included in the e-mail.

Once recipients click on the embedded link, they are directed to a website prompting them to download a file appearing to be an update of their software package.  The file has a naming convention that uses the actual name of their software followed by an “.exe extension.”

Upon completion, tax professionals believe they have downloaded a software update when in fact they have loaded a program designed to track the tax professional’s key strokes, which is a common tactic used by cyber thieves to steal login information, passwords and other sensitive data.

Courtesy of IRS

For more information contact Neikrik, Mahoney and Smith at 502-896-2999

Keeping Your Passwords Protected

From Neikirk, Mahoney & Smith, the IRS has published tips on the topic of protecting your passwords. Much of the public uses the same password over and over again on their different accounts online. This is partially why a single successful phishing scam can be so devastating, because when they get a password for one of your accounts it is likely that password will work on another.

For this reason, new stronger standards are being implemented in tax software products for 2016. Those standards include:

• A password that has eight or more characters, including upper case, and lower case letters as well as numbers and a special character.
• New features include a timed lockout and limits on unsuccessful log-in attempts.
• You must complete three security questions.
• Tax software partners must verify email addresses. In many cases, this means a PIN will be sent to your email or text that you must use to verify your address before you can proceed with your tax software.

These are just a few of the new protections that will be in place for the 2016 tax season to protect you from identity thieves. Most of the protections we are taking may not be visible to you, but they will add layers of protection nonetheless, adding new and stronger protections during tax time.

While these are changes that are being implemented in tax software, it would be a good idea to think about these standards with all passwords that you create.
You can contact Neikirk, Mahoney & Smith by phone at 502-896-2999, or through their website contact form