Wednesday, February 8, 2012

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

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