John Healy's Tech Blog

Tag: Scams

  • IRS “Dirty Dozen” tax scams — phone and email fraud

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    1. Phone tax scams top the IRS’ so-called “Dirty Dozen” for this filing season. Read the full article for what to do and not to do. Aggressive and threatening phone calls by criminals impersonating IRS agents remain a major threat to taxpayers, headlining the annual “Dirty Dozen” list of tax scams for the 2016 filing season, … The IRS has seen a surge of these…

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  • Tax scams — email phishing

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    Tax scams are nothing new. The digital age has made such scams even more common. So, I received a phishing email message today claiming to be from “irs.online.services@irs.gov” with “Update Your E-file Records For 2015 Tax Return” as the subject. A detailed examination revealed that the message was not in fact from the IRS (no surprise) and contained a (malicious) link to probably a hijacked…

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  • Valentine’s Day — scams as usual

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    As I’ve noted in previous posts, while holidays are times to celebrate, they also are opportunities for scammers to trick you. The latest issue of VIPRE Security News reminds us of 5 common scams. 5 Scams Designed to Break Your Heart: Lovely Email or Unlovely Malware? Infected e-cards Google-based Traps Social Media Frauds Sales-related Scams Read the full article for a description of these scams…

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  • More and more phone scams

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    The July 2015 issue of VIPRE Security News notes that: “Retail and finance call centre phone scamming in the US is up 30 percent according to research from Pindrop Security, a phone security company.” Attackers call across international borders at 10x the rate of legitimate callers. Spoofing technology allows attackers to hide their true automatic number identification and appear as a local call on Caller…

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  • Credit Score Scams — a scam that hasn’t changed about score changes

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    If your email address has been “harvested” by scammers, then at some point you’ll probably get an email message with a subject like “Your credit score has changed,” or “Your Equifax score has been modified” or something similar, possibly referring to Experian or TransUnion as well. From “Score Advisor” or something similar. These scam spam messages try to get you to reveal private information. Scammers…

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