When Joellen Howell saw this email claiming to be from the IRS, she opened it right away."It looked very legitimate because it had the IRS seal and everything and it said I got a refund of $79 dollars and something," said Howell.
Howell was pleasantly surprised, but a few minutes later, something strange happened.
"I noticed I had another one from the IRS and clicked on it and it said $109.30," she said.
Two refunds in the space of a few minutes? That got Howell to thinking, but she clicked on the links in the email anyway.
"When I got on the link it said I could receive the refunds automatically to my debit card," said Howell.
The email asks for Social Security numbers, debit card numbers, pin numbers and that raised Howell's suspicion when she tried to click on the privacy link embedded in the message.
The IRS giving away money.
People would have a better chance at meeting E.T., and going up in his space ship!
There's a similar one purporting to come from the UK equivalent of the IRS, HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) also doing the rounds, perhaps sent by the same people. This one seems to be targeted at people with .co.uk email addresses. And like above I received TWO within the space of minutes.
While I would love a tax refund (I got one two years ago, a nice surprise!), I doubt they'd send notification to a throwaway email address! And then ask for all the information that THEY should already hold (ie our equivalent of the Social Security Number).
It's all so obviously a fake, yet people get caught by it...