 Internal Revengers, IRS Tax News, IRS Security Summit partners begin national tax security awareness week. Urge people to watch out for holiday scams and protect personal information as tax season nears. Honestly, Christmas terrifies the IRS, you know? I mean, you've got these criminals out there trying to rob people, leaving people's pockets empty. Come the IRS is plundering season. I mean, it's ridiculous. It's like when a Viking ship touches down at a rich unarmed monastery ready to plunder, only to find that some rival clan has gotten there first and has taken all the gold and stuff. The IRS is like, you know what, it's bad enough when people try to spend their own money on stuff during Christmas. But at least then we can plunder the stores they gave their money to. But these dang fraudsters, they don't typically report their income. So we can't, we can't plunder them. And therefore they need to be stopped. Honestly, the IRS can be very protective of their marks. I mean, the people, first a joke, though. Twitter employees demand Elon Musk be destroyed. You dirtbags have been in third place for five years. Yeah, we're about to be in a dead place. Stating that the Folger's coffee in the office recreation room, replacing the coffee Yako's select double A coffee blend is more than adequate grounds for Musk's destruction. I hate you. I will destroy you. In a show of protest, a gang of disgruntled employees in the dead of night dressed as January 6th rioters, disposed of the offensive Folger's coffee grounds. Well, I do mind the dude minds. This will not stand. You know, this aggression will not stand, man. By dumping them into the inner tube lazy river. It'd be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. No, what the heck? I'll laugh anyway. Which apparently runs through the middle of the Twitter office and stops off at a nice bar on one end and a coffee shop at the other. So the Twitter employees could enjoy coffee and drinks without ever having to leave the pool. How dare I? How dare I? I are 2022-204 November 28, 2022 Washington on Cyber Monday, the internal revenue service and the security summit. There's a link to that here. Partners kick off the seventh national tax security awareness week with information for taxpayers and tax professionals on how to avoid scams and protect sensitive personal information with the holiday season now in full swing. The period presents a prime opportunity for identity thieves to try stealing personal financial information, which also could be used to potentially file fraudulent tax returns. Also note when you're thinking about people stealing identities, your first thought might be that they would be targeting higher income individuals in some kind of fraud, but oftentimes and more so in current years than in prior years, they might be targeting low income individuals, possibly specifically to file fraudulent tax returns due to in part the increases in recent years of refundable tax credits, like the earned income tax credit, the child tax credit, and so on. So if you file a tax return, even if it has a low amount of income, the amount of refund or benefit program basically related to it can be significant, which you would think would lead to more targeting towards the lower income individual. So we just got to be aware of that. Also, the changes in the tax code, for example, make it so that people are uncertain, you know, they don't know what's going on so much because the ground is changing more rapidly than it has in the past. That also makes an environment that is ripe for fraud. So people can face risks if they're shopping online and using public accessible Wi-Fi. So you got to be careful when shopping on the public access Wi-Fi. And some it reminds people that fictitious text scams with quote smishing and quote schemes continue during this period. So you got the phishing and you've got the phishing on the text messages on the phones as well. So obviously when you're on the phone, you might be even more likely as you're driving or not driving as you're doing whatever you're doing to, you know, click on something or tap on something or whatever because you're doing 10 things at one time. So you want to be more aware of that because clearly as the technology increases, the fraudsters will the fraudsters, the scammers and the and whatever the trolls will find new ways to harm you. But in any case quote with holiday shopping starting and the 2023 tax season quickly approaching, many people will be using laptops and personal devices to share sensitive financial information and quote said IRS acting commissioner Doug O'Donald quote in the months ahead, these same devices will be used to complete millions of tax returns by both taxpayers and tax professionals making the holiday season the perfect time to take steps to protect your valuable information and watch out for scams end quote. So there it is the iris is like don't let someone else pick your pocket before us remember tax season is right down right around the corner. Any case formed in 2015 the security summit partnership between the IRS state tax administrators and tax software and tax professional community have worked together to improve defenses and protect people from tax related identity theft as part of that effort the summit partners worked to raise taxpayer and tax professional awareness about security issues not only protecting people from the risk of identity theft but helping protect the nation's tax system from refund related fraud such a noble group these guys here. So the summit partners urge people to take extra extra care while shopping online or viewing emails and texts especially during the holiday season when criminals are very active the security summit reminds everyone to stay safe while holiday shopping with the following considerations. Shop at a site where the web address begins with HTTPS that usually gives you the little padlock thing up top so if it doesn't have the padlock or just has an HTTP you probably don't want to give that site your credit card possibly so the S is for secure communications and look for the padlock icon in the browser window don't shop on unsecure public wi-fi places like a mole so if you're if you're accessing just public wi-fi then that is usually not a safe place to be because I guess people can hang out there and I don't know follow your keystrokes or something and get your passwords or whatever keep security software for computers tablets and mobile phones up updated so you want to update your stuff because if it's not updated people find holes and then they go in there and and then rob you or something do something terrible so protect the devices of family members including young children older adults as well as less technically savvy users so clearly the people that are kind of in the middle of this technological age here are the people that are have the thickest skin because they have the most awareness of what is happening the fraudsters will be targeting those that are outside of there and if you can imagine just not too long ago before we were inundated with all this kind of stuff this is like a whole new world right you wouldn't be used to just being bombarded with with texts and spam all the time so that of course would be young people and older people being the most vulnerable and those are going to be the people the fraudsters will of course target so make sure antivirus software for computers has a feature to stop malware and that there is a firewall enabled that can prevent in intrusion so you want to have the malware software and so on you strong and unique passwords for online accounts so of course you have to have the unique passwords which means they're basically unless you're a genius or like a photographic memory unmemorizable at least if you have a whole lot of them which most people do so you might want to look into some sorting devices there's there's kind of a software that can that can sort the the logins and whatnot you have to come up with some kind of system to organize all your logins or else it will become quite painful to deal with very complicated logins so you might want to do some research there's pros and cons to different methods of doing that use multi-factor authentication whenever possible it helps prevent fees from easily hacking accounts so clearly the multi-factor there is a big deal because then you typically have to use two devices or something like that so that if someone got access to one device then hopefully that would not yet be enough for them to completely destroy you so the IRS also reminds people about advice from the federal trade commission there's a link to that here to never buy anything from online sellers that accept payment only by gift cards yeah if someone just says you know it's like it kind of makes me laugh to some degree but you when you have the fraudsters that they put together an elaborate fraud and then you actually get someone ready to pay them something and then they ask to be paid with a gift card you know you you would think you know that doesn't sound that doesn't sound right it's someone's because it just it's why would they do that it's only because it's non-trackable and if it's non-trackable and if that's important then they must be something doing something wrong you would think so only money transfers through companies like western union or moneygram or cryptocurrency so you'd like to be able to track your transfusion if you're doing something legal you would like to be able to you know track your transaction if you want to report it or something you know like that so usually when you're spending money then you know you're not looking to to have it hidden with a gift card you'd like the audit trail generally so payment so payments you make that that way are nearly impossible to trace and reverse so scammers often tell people to use those payment methods so they can get money quickly additionally the IRS warned taxpayers of a recent increase in IRS themed texting scams aimed at stealing personal and financial information during 2022 the IRS identified and reported thousands of fraudulent domains tied to multiple MMS SMS text scams no one has smishing that's a funny term I just can't I can't really get into that term I don't know why just that's smishing smishing it's just I don't know but targeting taxpayers so there it is I just I say just turn the phone off the thing is I the thing is evil the phone is evil I think I just use it to I just use it for the GPS system saying okay uh smishing companies target mobile phone users and the scam messages often look like they're coming from the IRS offering lures like fake COVID relief tax credits or help setting up an IRS online account recipients of the IRS related scams can report them on phishing at irs.gov there's a link to that here there'll be a link to this in the description so I won't repeat that 10 times stolen data can be used to file fraudulent tax returns that make it more difficult for the IRS and the states to detect because the fraudulent returns use real financial information other data thieves sell the basic tax preparer or taxpayer information on the web so other fraudsters can try filing fraudulent tax returns so given the rise of texting scams taxpayers can check out security recommendations for their specific mobile phone by reviewing the federal communications commission's smartphone security checker just just turn it off just turn it off thing is uh telling you the government's following your you got a honing beacon and you're okay it's okay it's okay since phones are used for shopping and even for doing taxes remember to make your phones and tablets are sure as secure as computers additional tips for tax professionals business and people working from home earlier this year to protect your clients protect yourself campaign there's a link to that here encourage tax professionals to focus on fundamentals and to watch out for emerging vulnerabilities being seen with those practitioners using cloud-based services for their practice scammers either trick or hack their way into tax professionals computers it's just it's painful to even read these people attacking tax professionals the salt of the earth the tax professionals for crying out loud who would who would attack such people any case even when tax pros thinks think they have client data stored in a secure cloud a lack of strong authentication can make this information vulnerable additional considerations for businesses and those working from home include use separate personal and business computers mobile devices and email accounts so you need to double the size of all your of all your devices that's great so do not send sensitive business information to personal email devices so that makes sense do not conduct business including online business banking or personal computer or device do not engage in web surfing gaming or video downloading on business computers or devices do not share usb drives or external hard drives between personal and business computers or devices so those usb drives are quite convenient to share data but apparently that's another way that people you know the scammers and and all the all the those those people out there trying to take you down they could put stuff on the usb apparently clearly obviously that will upload automatically so you got to be careful with those thumb drives never connect an unknown untrusted piece of hardware into the system or network change passwords often every three months is is recommended consider using a password management application to store your passwords it's not you almost have to do that there's pros and cons to using one of those i'm losing my voice but you kind of have to do it because otherwise how you gonna manage the 100 different passwords that are like 50 characters long and have numbers and characters that are weird and whatever so anyways passwords to devices and applications that contain business information should not be reused this is the first in a series of press released highlighting the summit partners national tax security awareness week from november 28th through december 2nd which will feature a week long series of educational materials to help protect individuals businesses and tax professionals from the identity theft which in turn will of course help the irs take your money during their season you got to get through the season without someone else taking your money so they could do it during tax time so the effort includes a november 29th webinar titled deeper dive into emergency cyber crime and crypto tax compliance there's a link to that here quite a long title special information graphics and a social media effort on twitter facebook and youtube follow at irs tax security you got at irs news and hashtag tax security on twitter for the latest information i hope they know how to use twitter i can't do nothing with twitter maybe musk will fix it so it works right it can't be my fault it's gotta be something wrong with the platform because it's ridiculous i get no traction by the way go go on my twitter and check it out give me something give me something over there it's ridiculous additional resources for tax professionals in addition to reviewing irs publication 4557 safeguarding taxpayer data there's a link to that here tax professionals can also get help with security recommendations by reviewing small business information security the fundamentals there's a link to that by the national institute of standards and technology the irs identity theft central page there's a link to that here for tax pros individuals and businesses have important details as well publication 5293 data security resource guide for tax professionals there's a link to that provides a compilation of data theft information available on irs.gov irs.gov irs.gov v for victory over stuff so yeah there's a lot of links here and there'll be a link to this in the description so then you can link on that and link over here and get access to all these links and then you can read all this stuff