Crims unleashed IRS-stabbing malware in bid to rob 464,000 people

Coming to a town near you...

I used to live in the US, glad I don't anymore. But my new home is pretty interesting too. For instance, my bank sends my credit card statements via email. Those emails are password protected, but only by national ID number, which you can't sneeze without giving out.

The statements also contain the full 16-digit credit card number, with no obfuscation whatsoever. In fact where I live now, is probably the home of fraud. Its on a whole other level here. Yet staff in shops / restaurants etc, don't even check if your signature matches the credit card. What's the future going to be like??? ... Ugly!

A Solution

A solution to this to eliminate income taxes, replacing them with excise and other consumption taxes. The Infernal Ripoff Service will pay lip service to security; remember they are a part of the same bunch that had all personal information of current feral employees stolen.

This is what data mining is all about - correlating data from various sources to filter out a specific group of people. You might do it in order to sell something to them, you might do it in order to steal from them, you might do it in order to single them out for - what?

Similar issue with Tax Software used by Accountants

Tax software used by accountants records passwords and keys required to file a tax return on behalf of a customer. There could be thousands of people in each DB depending on the size of the accountancy business. There has been cases before where this has been pilfered. There is no way to completely protect the information even if the software encrypts it in the DB as it need to be decrypted before it can be transmitted.

A proper process needs to be in place to avoid fraud.

Letters and emails should be sent on submission of a tax return and on advice of a refund on your tax.

There should be a delay in the refund to allow any fraud to be detected.

Address changes should have a process to avoid fraud, e.g. letter to old address informing them of the change, contact us if you didn't authorise this.

Bank details for refund, any changes again need to be written in a letter and a delay added to ensure any fraud is detected by the letter.

Agent bank details changes should require extra monitoring of any changes as the repercussions are so enormous.

Send for IDS

There's an urgent need for full investigation at the highest level of the ways in which crooks and villains are manipulating new technologies in order to get their hands on government pay-outs. The underlying problem is clearly international and he may need to spend quite some time away from the UK in order to gain a thorough understanding of the complete picture.

You'd think someone filing your tax return for you would be doing you a favor.

Not if you're a 'Merkin you don't.

For us, the IRS is sort of like National Healthcare is for you Brits: the unavoidable place all your vital information is kept with complete crap security on the front end. A fair number of Americans qualify to use the EZ form. Someone with a 4th grade education in math can complete it, especially on paper. But they don't distribute those once ubiquitous forms forcing these same people into online forms. Worse, the state have done the same thing, only they don't put up the online forms. Thus forcing people to use Quicken (in the form of TurboTax), H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt, or some other very overpriced agency to file their taxes ($250 once because I had three jobs and three bank accounts. I paid it because H&R comes with a small bit of liability shielding and there was unemployment income in that set.)

I have avoided this particular issue for years by consistently underpaying my estimate, requiring a payment to be made when filing. If someone else files a fraudulent return ahead of me and gets a refund I probably will not know about it, and I expect the IRS and state tax agencies will accept the valid return and payment without question. The (very) small amount of interest on the underpayment covers about half the cost of the tax preparation software.