Phishing Could Leave You Fishing For Your Stimulus Check!

Did you know that most people won’t need to take any action at all to receive their stimulus check? If someone is asking you for your information to process your stimulus check, it’s not the IRS! The IRS will never call or email you about your payment, so beware of people phishing for your personal tax information. Here are some tips on how to protect yourself:What is phishing?Phishing is a type of scam where people try to seem like they’re coming from a legitimate source in order to steal your personal or financial information.How to recognize phishing.A common example of phishing is someone contacting you pretending to be from the IRS in an attempt to access your tax information such as your W-2s or your social security number.How to protect yourself from phishing. If you get a phone call or an email asking for any personal information, always be suspicious. Do not open any attachments in any emails or reply to them. Before you do anything, verify with the source of the supposed contact. For example, if you receive an email that looks like it’s from your accounting firm, call and verify with the firm that they requested that information. If you could not confirm the integrity of the email, report it and delete it.How to report phishing.If you receive a phishing attempt that looks like it’s from the IRS you can forward the email as-is to the IRS at phishing@irs.gov. If it’s a phone call the most common course of actions is to simply block the phone number, protecting you from future calls from that number. For phishing attempts over text message claiming to be from the IRS you can forward the text message and the phone number you received the message from to 202-552-1226.