Well, it is that time of year again: tax season. Everyone loves it right? One group that does love it is cyber criminals. They know that this time of year, most people get nervous about their taxes. Any dealings with the IRS are not pleasant and this causes the average person to think less clearly. Because of this, we all might be more susceptible to email or text messages claiming to come from the IRS with threats of jail time for missed tax payments. This is understandable. In this quick lesson, I will show you how this is never legitimate and how to protect yourself.

But first, how does this even relate to HIPAA?

HIPAA is about protecting patient data and privacy. It doesn’t matter how that privacy is breached, it just matters if it is breached or not. If you were to receive an email claiming to be from the IRS and wanting you to click on a link to “make a payment”, you could potentially give access to an attacker to your computer. If this happened on a practice computer, now the practice has been breached. Any phishing attempt, regardless of its techniques, is a potential breach.

Some basics

The IRS will NEVER contact you via email or text message. Here it is from the IRS’ website:

• The IRS doesn’t normally initiate contact with taxpayers by email.
• The agency does not send text messages or contact people through social media.
• When the IRS needs to contact a taxpayer, the first contact is normally by letter delivered by the U.S. Postal Service.  Fraudsters will send fake documents through the mail, and in some cases will claim they already notified a taxpayer by U.S. mail.

As with other forms of phishing, the email will likely have grammar mistakes, the website addresses won’t be to official links, and you will be asked to do things you know you shouldn’t do.

Text messages claiming to be from the IRS are always scams. Period.

How can you protect yourself?

First, remember that any email or text message claiming to be from the IRS is almost certainly a scam.

Second, even if you think it might be legitimate, don’t click on the link. Go to the website directly and then log in. This is especially true of banking or Amazon phishing attempts. Never click on the link, just open your browser and go to amazon.com and log in. If what the message says is true, you will see it there.

Always be mindful of scams but especially around key times of the year, such as tax season. The amount of scams increases dramatically around this time.