I’ve never received a call or an email from the IRS. As far as I know, they do not make calls or send emails. Emails that seem to come from the IRS will often have a name, title, and even “IRS” at the beginning or end of the email address. However, email addresses can easily be spoofed.

Unless you are actively engaged in dialog with an IRS agent, do not respond to emails or phone calls supposedly coming from the IRS.

If a scammer posing as an IRS agent ever contacts you, they may already have some of your personal information, which they can use to try to convince you that they are actually from the IRS. This data could come from public records or even your trash. The scammer will often put pressure on you to comply with their request, or even offer you a tax refund.

If you ever receive documentation in the mail indicating earned income that you are not aware of, it may mean that someone else has used your Social Security number to gain employment.

If, when filing your tax return, you receive a letter from the IRS saying that you have already filed, it almost certainly means that someone else has filed a fraudulent return on your behalf in order to steal your refund.

If you are ever a victim of an identity theft issue related to an IRS scam, you may be very disappointed in the way it is handled via the various government agencies. They simply don’t allocate the resources to fix this problem proactively, nor are they adept at responding once it has occurred. The biggest issue is the thief’s privacy. Even if you have an idea who may have done it, the IRS or any other government agency will not release that information. Either way, knowing who did it won’t help you.

All you can do in the event of tax related identity theft is to follow the IRS’s instructions for contacting an agent and resolving the issue. Just be patient, as rectifying the issue may take many hours.

McAfee Identity Protection includes proactive identity surveillance to monitor subscribers’ credit and personal information and access to live fraud resolution agents who can help subscribers work through the process of resolving identity theft issues. For additional tips, please visit http://www.counteridentitytheft.com

Robert Siciliano is a McAfee consultant and identity theft expert. See him discuss IRS related identity theft on Fox News. (Disclosures)

Robert_Siciliano@McAfee.com
www.CounterIdentityTheft.com

My expertise is identity theft protection. And frankly, I’m confused by what many other companies are offering. I understand the gist of most of what they do, but what they are best at is smoke and mirrors. There is a fundamental lack of transparency in the identity protection industry.

Identity protection, first and foremost, needs to be transparent. You should know what you are getting and what it does and why it is a benefit to you.

Most identity theft protection services offer “monitoring.” But they don’t say what they monitor or how they monitor or what benefit that monitoring will provide you. Monitoring can mean searching the web with readily available free search engines, or it can mean searching for your data on a specific set of websites. Monitoring can also refer to credit monitoring, in which the provider has a relationship with one or more credit bureaus and alerts you if there is activity on your credit report.

These services also say they will help you recover from identity theft, but in the fine print they tell you that recovery is limited to what they protect if their service fails.

An identity theft protection service should inform you when your personally identifying information, such as your name, Social Security number, or credit or debit card number, are used to commit fraud or other crimes.

Identity theft protection should keep pace with the evolving criminal landscape and involve multiple layers of proactive monitoring, detection, automatic alerts, and an intuitive customer experience.

McAfee Identity Protection includes:

- Daily 3-bureau credit monitoring to detect potential financial fraud

- Identity surveillance capabilities to monitor the Internet, change-of-address databases and public records for inappropriate uses of your personal information

- Immediate notifications, via email, SMS text, or your McAfee online account, if any suspicious activity is detected

- Lost wallet protection to make it easy to safeguard your credit and debit card accounts by canceling lost or stolen cards on your behalf and ordering replacements

- Unlimited credit reports from Experian to help you to stay on top of your credit history

- Unlimited phone support from dedicated fraud resolution agents, who’ll work with you to help resolve any identity issues – even issues that occurred prior to your enrollment in McAfee Identity Protection

- A product guarantee of up to $1 million that covers you if you are victimized by identity theft while subscribed to McAfee Identity Protection.

McAfee hopes to educate consumers about identity theft so that they can make informed choices on the ways to protect themselves. McAfee has launched a new website dedicated to consumer education at http://www.counteridentitytheft.com/. The site includes a tool to help consumers access their risk for identity theft and make necessary adjustments.

Ultimately, you want to make an informed decision and invest in identity theft protection from a trusted provider. McAfee is one of the world’s largest and most trusted names in digital security. Protect your most important valuable asset — your identity — with McAfee Identity Protection.

Robert Siciliano
IDTheftExpert@mcafee.com
http://twitter.com/robertsiciliano