Scams - Tax and Energy

My e-mail trash is full of phishing spam. Much saying it’s from the Internal Revenue Service. Nothing new there. The current spam tells me that my tax deposit/transfer has been rejected. Someone is always trying to scam taxpayers with bogus tax related e-mails. This specific type of phishing will be around for a while and then it will fade out for a while to be replaced by another tax scam. The bottom line is that the IRS doesn’t use e-mail to make primary contact with taxpayers. Unless you are working with the IRS on a specific issue and trading e-mails with a specific individual or department, IRS e-mails are probably phishing and should be trashed with extreme prejudice. If you want to report the phishing to the IRS, they have a special page on their website set up to do that.

While I’m talking scams, I received an e-mail from Alex Bishoff today. He publishes an energy website.  The impression I got was that he wanted to comment on a post and mention energy scams but I close comments after several months (due to comment spam) and he was unable to comment. Instead, he sent me an e-mail linking to his website; open4energy. In the left sidebar are links to 3 collections of energy scams. They debunk devices or programs which are supposed to save energy directly or indirectly. I would check it out if you are considering an energy saving/monitoring device.

The internet has made it easier to scam people. It doesn’t matter what the hook; taxes or energy. But it also makes it easier for us to check out what we find in our inboxes. It’s up to you.

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