This was sent to me by an accounting manager at Yamaha....
22 April 2008: New Phishing Scam Targeting Economic Stimulus PaymentsRight on cue we are starting to see phishing scams with an economic stimulus payment flavor. As we discussed in one of the IRS phishing scam blog entries.
www.mxlogic.com/itsecurityblog/1/2008/03/New-IRS-Refund-Scam-with-a-Vishing-Twist.cfm we predicted that as the economic stimulus payment distribution got closer (currently scheduled to begin May 2nd based on the last two digits of your Social Security Number) we would start to see more scams around these payments. We are starting to see some of the first iterations of those scams today.
As has been common with most of the government agency spoof s that we have seen over the past year, this one has an IRS logo at the top of the message that is being pulled directly from the IRS web site at irs.gov .
The samples that we are seeing allege to be from "
service@irs.gov" and have a subject line of "2008 Economic Stimulus Refund."
The phish content is as follows:Over 130 million Americans will receive refunds as part of President Bush program to jump start the economy. Our records indicate that you are qualified to receive the 2008 Economic Stimulus Refund. The fastest and easiest way to receive your refund is by direct deposit to your checking/savings account.
Please click on the link and fill out the form and submit before April 24th, 2008 to ensure that your refund will be
processed as soon as possible.
Submitting your form on April 24th, 2008 or later means that your refund will be delayed due to the volume of requests we anticipate for the Economic Stimulus Refund.
To access Economic Stimulus Refund, please click here.
The "click here" link takes the user to a prototypical phishing site where they are asked for their bank routing number and checking account number so that the rebate can be directly deposited into their checking account. The scammers are also trying to establish a sense of urgency to get you to click the link by saying that you have to fill out and submit the form before April 24th if you want to get your stimulus payment on time. Failure to do so will result in delays. This could be an effective tactic against those who may not be scheduled to receive their rebate until July
or against the extremely impatient who think that this could be a shortcut to getting their rebate quicker.
This is about the time that we expected to start seeing these scams start coming out, and this certainly won't be the last of them, especially since the distribution of t he stimulus payments is expected to last a couple of months.
As with all of the IRS scams that we have seen to date, there are a couple of things that you should remember:
-- The IRS does not communicate with the public over email.
-- To that point, the IRS does not even know what your email address is.
If you use at home tax software the software vendor might ask you for your email address, but this is for the purpose of sending you status updates with respect to your tax filing. These emails are not from the IRS.
With respect to the economic stimulus payments, also remember:
-- The economic stimulus payments are being distributed based on your 2007 tax filing. The information for how to distribute your rebate to you will be done based off of your tax forms.
-- The payment schedule
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=180247,00.htmlfor the economic stimulus payments has already been established by the IRS. There is no way to accelerate this process.
Please send a link to this page to let all your friends and family or business associates know about this and help end this by letting everybody know about it and be warned ahead of time. Thanks
