w-2 phishing

March 6, 2016

Seagate Phish Exposes All Employee W-2’s

This post was originally published on this site Email scam artists last week tricked an employee at data storage giant Seagate Technology into giving away W-2 tax documents on all current and past employees, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. W-2 forms contain employee Social Security numbers, salaries and other personal data, and are highly prized by thieves involved in filing phony tax refund requests with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the states. Seagate headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. Image: Wikipedia According to Seagate, the scam struck on March 1, about a week after KrebsOnSecurity warned readers to be on the lookout for email […]
February 2, 2017

IRS: Scam Blends CEO Fraud, W-2 Phishing

This post was originally published on this siteMost regular readers here are familiar with CEO fraud — e-mail scams in which the attacker spoofs the boss and tricks an employee at the organization into wiring funds to the fraudster. Loyal readers also have heard an earful about W-2 phishing, in which crooks impersonate the boss and request a copy of all employee tax forms. According to a new “urgent alert” issued by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, scammers are now combining both schemes and targeting a far broader range of organizations than ever before. The IRS said phishers are off to a much […]
March 17, 2017

Govt. Cybersecurity Contractor Hit in W-2 Phishing Scam

This post was originally published on this siteJust a friendly reminder that phishing scams which spoof the boss and request W-2 tax data on employees are intensifying as tax time nears. The latest victim shows that even cybersecurity experts can fall prey to these increasingly sophisticated attacks. On Thursday, March 16, the CEO of Defense Point Security, LLC — a Virginia company that bills itself as “the choice provider of cyber security services to the federal government” — told all employees that their W-2 tax data was handed directly to fraudsters after someone inside the company got caught in a phisher’s […]
March 21, 2017

Student Aid Tool Held Key for Tax Fraudsters

This post was originally published on this siteCiting concerns over criminal activity and fraud, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has disabled an automated tool on its Web site that was used to help students and their families apply for federal financial aid. The removal of the tool has created unexpected hurdles for many families hoping to qualify for financial aid, but the action also eliminated a key source of data that fraudsters could use to conduct tax refund fraud. Last week, the IRS and the Department of Education said in a joint statement that they were temporarily shutting down the IRS’s Data Retrieval […]