Hackers are impersonating the IRS and sending scam emails to victims asking them to pay balances related to health coverage for 2014
The fraudulent emails pretend to be a CP-2000 notice from the IRS, a notice the agency sends to taxpayers if income or payment information does not match information provided on their tax returns. In the email phishing scheme, the scam emails say victims owe a balance related to the Affordable Care Act health coverage requirements
http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-information-technology/in-new-email-phishing-scam-hackers-pose-as-irs-officials-sending-aca-tax-bills.html
Thanks for sharing Vaibhav. The greatest way to prevent these scams from being successful is public awareness. Unfortunately, the victims of these scams probably are novice users of the Internet and are not aware of these types of scams. There was a post last week about a crackdown on one of the payment processors for these types of scammers (i.e. PacNet). Disrupting the financial path, is another important step in cracking down on mail/e-mail fraud attempts to solicit payments from victims. I hope the crackdown on PacNet also exposes the scammers that use these services to victimize honest citizens that are just trying to do the right thing.
Yeah correctly said the public awareness is one of the method to prevent such scams.It is often seen that when origin of mails are tracked they come out as some hackers group based outside country.
Like you Jason, public awareness is one of the method to prevent these scams. Unfortunately, these scams are uses highly sophisticated social engineering techniques that can make people feel overwhelmed and obliged to comply. Some of the things that I tell people is never to provide payment information or Social security number over the phone, unless they can provide you a call back number, which you can validate on the institutions website and call the institution yourself.