IRS Phishing Scam

Today I received an email supposedly from the IRS. I want to show everyone how I knew it was a scam and tell you what to do if you get a similar message:

Click for full size image.

#1 The From address is NOT a .gov domain, much less an irs.gov domain... it is vnsl(dot)com.
#2 Personal information like this would never be mass mailed, the government does not use mailing lists, so the multiple recipients are a dead give away.
#3 Colloquialism in the greeting, "Good day," - This is not the start of an official document.
#4 The website it linked to, on mouseover produced another site that was not a .irs.gov domain (in fact, even more telling that it was dangerous was the fact it was an "ftp" (file transfer protocol) site meaning when clicked it was going to try to access a file:

#5 Knowing that I have good protection and that I can handle anything it throws at me, I clicked the link (I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS) and immediately was greeted with this:

#6 Colloquialism in the salutation, "Yours faithfully" - Not a professional salutation.
#7 Finally, the official name of the IRS is backward, officially it is:

Department of the Treasury Internal Revenue Service

Sh*t My Customers Say (Random Advice)

Folks, this may come as a surprise to you, but just because you don't understand how a computer works, does not mean that your tech guy doesn't either. Lying (misleading) the person trying to help you is, at best, going to cause any fix to take longer (costing you more money). If you don't know what happened, just say so. If you do know, tell us! Guessing can be just as bad, your tech doesn't know your level of expertise and may go on a wild goose chase because of your guess. If nothing else tell us what you were doing when the problem occurred! Any tech worth their salt has seen it all before anyway and is not interested in judging you. Some things to consider:

Computers are not magical.

Computers do not have minds of their own, they can only do what they are told to do.

No matter what you hear in chat rooms or on Facebook, computers don't just "go wild" and start acting up for no reason (or to get you to buy new software).

This is not to say that hardware doesn't go bad from time to time and stop functioning properly, but I can tell you this:

1. Your computer will not download porn onto your system for no reason. There are some viruses that download porn, but they pretty much went extinct with Dial-up Internet. The reason being, they would dial toll-based numbers and download nasty porn thus making the company money on the toll, and making you too ashamed to do anything about it short of taking a sledge hammer to your hard drive.
2. There is no magical button you can accidentally press and make horrible things happen (that usually takes pressing at least 2 buttons at once [har har] ). The majority of problems with computers that do not involve being romantically entangled with a dirty Intarweb connection are caused by lack of user patients.
3. Windows Update is on YOUR side! I can't believe how many times I have been told that a computer was working fine until Windows Update ran and then *poof* the computer became a boat anchor. We have all seen the horror stories on the Internet, and it *does* happen occasionally (I can recall two documented cases in the past 10 years, both on XP), but when it does, it is not to a single individual, it is to all users of a particular piece of hardware or software. Most of the horror stories you read involving Windows Update leave out an important piece of information such as: "I thought the update was taking too long so I powered off my computer mid-update".
4. When it comes to Virus Protection, more is not always better. Everyone wants to have good virus protection. There are millions of malicious websites out there that, if given the chance, will infect you faster than *insert unprotected sex metaphor here* but do yourself a favor; choose ONE anti-virus program and stick with it. Not all antivirus programs are equal, but they all offer the same basic protection. What makes one "better" than another is usually the resource usage, how often it bothers you, or it's special features (such as IM protection, e-mail protection, or a firewall). Once you find one that you like, or that at least fits your needs, use it and ONLY it. DO NOT INSTALL MORE THAN ONE ANTI-VIRUS PROGRAM ON YOUR COMPUTER AT A TIME! Multiple anti-virus programs can fight with each other and actually render each other useless.
5. In most cases, the average home user has no need for any firewall other than Windows Firewall. Almost every anti-virus manufacturer out there has some form of 'premium' service that includes a software firewall. Unfortunately, the majority of these firewalls are way too aggressive at blocking legitimate things and become an inconvenience to the user. When this happens, the user has two choices; create an exception for each legit program it blocks, or just disable the firewall leaving themselves completely unprotected. Windows Firewall gives a great basic protection that, in most cases, will not block legitimate programs form communication with the Internet.
6. NO program will make your computer faster than its hardware limitations. You see ads all over the Internet advertising tune-up programs, registry cleaners, spyware removal, etc. While most of these programs are legit, they can only do so much, and like the anti-virus software mentioned above, almost all of them are equal. Regardless of how convincing the ad, your computer is limited by two major things: The hardware (actual computer parts) and your Internet connection. Generally what these tune up programs do is tweak the settings a bit to make the hardware or Internet connection run more efficiently... sort of like putting Premium gas in your car; it's not going to become a top-fuel dragster. Beware of any utility program that claims to make your computer "faster than new" because to substantiate that claim, they typically disable uncommonly used system services that you may need now or in the future. These programs were great back in the days when RAM was measured in Megabytes, but anyone with a GB or more of RAM won't even notice a difference.

I would love an opportunity to answer some direct questions people have; feel free to e-mail me and I will answer your questions in my next blog post.