{"id":12341,"date":"2017-02-21T23:00:44","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T05:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/?p=12341"},"modified":"2017-02-21T22:15:29","modified_gmt":"2017-02-22T04:15:29","slug":"irs-warns-tax-professionals-of-new-scam-to-unlock-their-tax-software-accounts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/2017\/02\/21\/irs-warns-tax-professionals-of-new-scam-to-unlock-their-tax-software-accounts\/","title":{"rendered":"IRS warns Tax Professionals of New Scam to \u201cUnlock\u201d Their Tax Software Accounts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IRSWashington, D.C.<\/strong> – The Internal Revenue Service, state tax agencies and the tax industry today warned tax professionals to be alert to a new phishing email scam impersonating software providers.<\/p>\n

The scam email comes with the subject line, \u201cAccess Locked.\u201d It tells recipients that access to their tax prep software accounts has been \u201csuspended due to errors in your security details.\u201d The scam email asks the tax professional to address the issue by using an \u201cunlock\u201d link provided in the email.<\/p>\n

\"Scam<\/a><\/p>\n

However, the link will take the tax professional to a fake web page, where they are asked to enter their user name and password.<\/p>\n

Instead of unlocking accounts, the tax professionals actually are inadvertently providing their information to cybercriminals who use the stolen credentials to access the preparers\u2019 accounts and to steal client information.<\/p>\n

The Security Summit partners, which includes the IRS, state tax agencies and the nation\u2019s tax community, remind tax professionals and taxpayers to never open a link or an attachment from a suspicious email. These scams can increase during the tax season.<\/p>\n

Tax professionals can review additional tips to protect clients and themselves at the Security Summit\u2019s awareness campaign, Protect Your Clients, Protect Yourself<\/a>, on IRS.gov.<\/p>\n

For tax professionals who receive emails purportedly from their tax software providers suggesting their accounts have been suspended, they should send those scam emails to their tax software provider.  <\/p>\n

For Windows users, please follow this process to help the investigation of these scam emails:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Use \u201cSave As\u201d to save the scam. Under \u201csave as type\u201d in the drop down menu, select \u201cplain text\u201d and save to your desk top. Do not click on any links.<\/li>\n
  2. Open a new email and attach this saved email as a file<\/li>\n
  3. Send your new email containing the attachment your tax software provider, as well as copy Phishing@IRS.gov<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Washington, D.C. – The Internal Revenue Service, state tax agencies and the tax industry today warned tax professionals to be alert to a new phishing email scam impersonating software providers. The scam email comes with the subject line, \u201cAccess Locked.\u201d It tells recipients that access to their tax prep software accounts has been \u201csuspended due […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[5970,641,642,1064,1714,11513,3338],"class_list":["post-12341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","tag-email-scam","tag-internal-revenue-service","tag-irs","tag-phishing","tag-scam","tag-tax-professionals","tag-washington-d-c"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12342,"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12341\/revisions\/12342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paristn.net\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}