E-mail tax scam warning from IRS

I was over at the IRS website getting ready for 2008 and spied a warning from the IRS regarding phony e-mails that have been being sent out by scam artists looking to take advantage of people by posing as the IRS and the Taxpayer Advocate Service (which is a real independent organization within the IRS).

You can find out about this scam by visiting the IRS Warns Taxpayers of New E-mail Scams article on the IRS website.

These e-mails generally seek to direct the recipient to a fake IRS website where they try to steal bank account information. The bait is often promises that the IRS has evaluated the recipient's fiscal activity and determined they have a refund coming, or even requests to help in capturing identity thieves by participating in an IRS sting.

The IRS does not send out unsolicited e-mails, and their genuine web address is www.irs.gov - I noticed when I was at Google looking for "taxes 2008" that one of the links that came up was for a .com version of the IRS website - don't fall for it. The IRS is a government entity, they have a .gov extension on their URL.

I'll probably expand on this scam later on my How Stupid Do They Think I Am? website, if so I'll drop a link here to that.