 Internal Revenue Service IRS tax news, tax time guide, minimize cyber footprints, protect personal information online. Yeah, good luck. I mean, but first, an attempt at a joke I apologized in advance. Apparently, everyone was scared of George V because he had great naval powers, which I thought was amazing. I can't imagine anybody being scared of my naval. I mean, what can you do with your naval anyways? Except gaze at it. And even that hurts your neck after a while. It must have been some kind of sorceress or hypnosis related naval power. George V walking out onto the battlefield, removing his beer belly armor, proclaiming, behold my naval, and tremble before its naval power. Gaze at the naval and become powerless to take action. He must have had to make sure never to gaze at his own powerful naval for too long, lest his naval gazing result in him succumbing to his own naval power. IR 2022-60, March 16th, 2022, Washington. The Internal Revenue Service today urged people to stay resolute against ongoing scams and schemes. There's links to scams and schemes here by properly securing computers, tablets and phones, solid cyber security protection and scam recognition is vital to reduce the threat of identity theft inside and outside the tax system. The IRS works closely with the Security Summit. There's a link to the Security Summit here, a partnership with state tax agencies and the private sector tax industry to help protect taxpayer information and defend against identity theft. They're just like the Justice League kind of, but with identity theft. But in any case, taxpayers and tax professionals, there's links to those items here. Can stakes take steps to help in this effort by doing things like minimizing cyber security footprints and recognizing common scams and schemes. Below are 10 tips to help minimize exposure to fraud and identity theft. Safeguard personal data, so obviously safeguarding the personal data would be a step towards securing it. Provide a social security number, for example, only when necessary. So obviously we don't wanna be given the social security number to basically anybody only when necessary. However, we have had the social security number like since the time we've been born and we've given it to every medical and financial institution and employer and so on since that time. So I would think at this point in time in the digital age, the social security number is likely to be compromised. So it'd be nice. You almost think we need to go to something else where they changed the number possibly periodically instead of having the same number. I know that would be kind of tedious. But in any case, obviously we don't wanna give the social security a number out. So there's that. So only offer personal information or conduct financial transactions on sites that have been verified as reputable encrypted websites. Protect personal information. Treat personal information like cash. Don't hand it out to just anyone. Social security numbers, credit card numbers, bank and even utility account numbers can be used to help steal a person's money or open new accounts. So again, this is a lot of this information that we could see as basically somewhat mundane, especially in a timeframe of not really obviously credit card numbers or social security numbers, but things that can help people to basically log in or try to hack into passwords and this kind of stuff, birthdays, where you live obviously addresses and so on and so forth. You would think in an age where everybody's on social media that that kind of information is more difficult to keep secure for a vast amount of people than it once was before that point in time. So, but all that kind of stuff once it builds up can lead people to be able to crack passwords and this kind of stuff as well. So use strong passwords. So that leads to the next one, which is of course, you probably don't wanna have the password just being your city you live in or something like that or a common password because those kind of things are the kind of things that can be picked up on the internet these days. So you want the strong passwords once that you generally, unless you're a crazy person or a very talented person, you can't even remember and you might need some kind of software to help you to populate all your texts, all your passwords because you have to put in these strong passwords and so on. So use a password phrase or series of words that will be easy for you to remember. Again, for most people to make a strong password, even with a like a good memory trick type of thing, not usually the easiest thing to do. You might wanna use other kind of software, maybe they can help to safeguard your passwords and still make strong passwords. I use at least 10 characters. 12 is ideal for most home users. Mix letters, numbers and special characters. So obviously some of those are some tricks that you could put in there and putting numbers and you might have a system of putting numbers in place of some certain letters or some characters in Pertin's place of some letters and so on that can help make possibly more memorized past, memorize a bold passwords easier to remember. Try to be unpredictable. Don't use names, birth dates or common words. Don't use the same password for many accounts and avoid sharing them. So again, that starts to get unmanageable quickly given the fact that everything you log into from your email address to your, every social, to your 5,000 socials media accounts and whatnot needs a password. So that means you might need another management system. So keep passwords in a secure place or use a password management tool so that that would be something you might wanna look into that management tool. Set password and encryption protection for a wireless network. If a home or business Wi-Fi is unsecure, it allows any computer within range to access the wireless network and potentially steal information from connected devices. Whenever it is an option for password protected account, you should also opt for multi-factor authentication process. Multi-factor authentication is critical to protecting your password. So obviously we all want everything on the Wi-Fi and accessible at this point in time. But of course that creates another like node in the system or whatever for nefarious people to do nefarious things. And we know there's a lot of nefarious people doing nefarious things. So that's how it is. Avoid phishing scams. The easiest way for criminals to steal sensitive data is simply to ask for it. IRS urges people to learn to recognize phishing emails. There's a link to that here. Calls or texts that pose as familiar organizations such as banks, credit card companies, or even the IRS. So we've all probably thought about or seen many phishing emails at this point in time. Notice that if you're not in an environment where you're constantly inundated with these phishing emails, then you can imagine people that they would be subject to those phishing emails. You can see that how you could easily basically respond to the phishing emails in that area. So certain groups like younger people and possibly older people in particular or people that didn't have wifi before, possibly people coming into the country or something that didn't have access to all this phishing email stuff are most likely more susceptible. And of course, sometimes the phishing emails get more precise when they're just trying to shotgun the phishing email. They look somewhat generic and we've all gotten used to that at this point in time. But if they try to actually target a smaller group of people, then the phishing emails can still be pretty effective even to people that have been inundated with phishing emails for the last 20 years or something. So keep sensitive data safe and be aware that an unsolicited email with a request to download an attachment or click on a URL could appear to come from someone that you know, like a friend, work college or a tax professional if their email has been spoofed or compromised. So we've all probably seen this kind of thing at this point in time. This, you know, a long time ago was the thing that steal someone's email and then they try to send out a message with someone else's email on it and that would give you more kind of personalization towards that email. So we still gotta be aware of that especially as tax professionals when we're trying to pick up clients or anybody trying to pick up clients and you need to have some degree of being able to contact people that you haven't talked to before and whatnot but you gotta be careful with that. Don't assume internet advertisements, pop-up ads or emails are from reputable companies. If an ad or offer looks too good to be true take a moment to check out the company behind it. So clearly if there's any pop-ups or anything those are gonna be something that you wanna check into more if they're interesting to you by basically doing more research on it. Never download quote security in quote software from a pop-up ad. So this was an old thing that they still do. Basically they infect your computer in essence with a pop-up ad which is kind of a form of infection of the computer. And then the pop-up ad acts like it's security software telling you that you got viruses that their software can save but their software is the one that violated your computer by downloading then when you didn't want it in the first place and then they're gonna help you by stopping the others. So it doesn't, that's not how things should work. So no, no, don't do business like that and it doesn't work anyways cause their whole thing is wrong. Obviously it's gonna have the wrong information coming up on it. So a pervasive ploy is a pop-up ad that indicates it has detected a virus on the computer that download most likely will install some type of malware reputable security software companies do not advertise in this manner. So obviously if you were a reputable software advisor that are trying to stop viruses you wouldn't advertise your software by giving someone a virus, right? You can see why a non-reputable company might try to do that to prove themselves. Say look, I infected your computer why don't you hire me to stop me from doing that again? Well, no, you know. So use security software an anti-virus program should provide protection from viruses, Trojans, spyware and adware. The IRS urges everyone to use an anti-virus program and always keep it up to date. Set security software to update automatically so it can be updated as threats emerge. Educate those less experienced about online safety children and those less online experience may not be fully aware of the perils of operating suspicious web pages, emails or documents. So again, we've been somewhat inundated with this for a long time now with the phishing and all this other kind of stuff. But, and we're still kind of, most of us are still do not feel at all completely, you know, like we know everything about this stuff. But obviously people that have not had like 20 years of it being hit with, you know, phishing emails and so on then are more susceptible. And that of course means younger people, older people and people that possibly are coming into the country, possibly that didn't have as much kind of internet stuff in prior to that possibly foreign language speakers. So teens and younger users can put themselves at risk by leaving a trail of personal information for con orders to follow. Backup files, no system is completely secure. Copy important files, including federal and state tax returns into removable disks or backup drives and cloud storage store disks, drives and any paper copies in secure locked locations. So you wanna make sure you back up your system so that if there is a crash or something you got a backup either on an external hard drive or on the cloud, know the risk of public wifi. Connection to public wifi is convenient and often free but it may not be safe. Hackers and cyber criminals can easily steal personal information from these networks, always use a virtual private network when connecting to the public wifi. So that's when the VPN, the virtual private network becomes more useful when you're on that public wifi. And of course, you wanna be more careful there and possibly not get into any personal kind of stuff like bank accounts and whatnot when you're on a public wifi. Review ID theft central designed to improve online access to information on identity theft. It serves taxpayers, tax professionals and businesses. The IRS doesn't initiate contact with taxpayers by email, text messages or social media channels to request personal or financial information. So if you get an email or messages or social media in particular, if you got a tweet that says I'm the IRS, give me your social security number, then the IRS doesn't usually make threatening tweets like that, at least not to personal people like individuals. So anyways, generally the IRS first mails a paper bill to the person who owes taxes and some special situations the IRS will call or come to the home or business. People should be alert to scammers posing as the IRS to steal personal information. So obviously impersonating a threatening organization, entity business or government entity like the IRS is one way that the fraudsters can try to do nefarious things. So you gotta be aware that the IRS doesn't typically do that. They work like a big bureaucratic agency. They work very slowly, mundanely. They send letters. You're typically well aware of what they're gonna do like way before they do it. So there are ways to know if it's really the IRS calling or knocking on someone's door. Taxpayers can find answers to questions, forms and instructions and easy to use tools online at irs.gov, irs.gov, the IRS website. They can use the resources to get help when it's needed at home, at work or on the go. This news release is part of a series called the Tax Time Guide. There's a links to the Tax Time Guide here, a resource to help taxpayers file an accurate tax return. Additional help is available in publication 17, your federal tax income tax. There's a link to that and other links here and there'll be a link to this in the description.