Beware of any e-mail from 'IRS'

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), May 10, 2004 | by JIM BAINBRIDGE Gazette online reporter

The Internal Revenue Service is warning consumers to be vigilant about an identity theft operation that tries to elicit personal information from taxpayers by sending e-mails alleging they're the subject of a tax investigation.

Neither the Treasury Department nor the Internal Revenue Service send e-mails to taxpayers about issues related to their accounts.

The official-looking e-mail tells recipients they can dispute the tax fraud charge by logging onto a Web site and providing detailed personal information such as Social Security, credit card and driver's license numbers.

Identity thieves use individuals' personal data to create false identification documents, to buy goods and to apply for loans, credit cards or other services in the victims' names.

The Internet service provider that hosted the fraudulent Web site shut it down at the request of the Treasury Department's inspector general for taxes. The IRS warns that new versions could surface.

Taxpayers who receive suspect e-mails should call the Treasury Department toll-free fraud hot line at 1-800-366-4484, or the IRS at 1-800-829-1040.

www.consumer.gov/idtheft

www.tigta.gov

Electronic voting flawed, expert says

Remember the debacle that was the 2000 presidential election? An expert warns the electronic voting systems planned for the November election are highly vulnerable and flawed and will open the door to another disputed result without a backup paper system.

"On a spectrum of terrible to very good, we are sitting at terrible," Aviel Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, told the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. "Not only have the vendors not implemented security safeguards that are possible, they have not even correctly implemented the ones that are easy."

Other experts said electronic voting offers advantages over paper balloting, including increasing access to the blind and people who do not speak English. They contend backing up electronic systems with paper ballots might be costly.

"We want systems that are secure but also accessible to people with disabilities," Stephen Berger, an expert at TEM Consulting, an engineering services consulting firm, told The Associated Press.

www.eac.gov

Breaking up now a messaging thing

Further evidence of the erosion of civility has surfaced. A survey shows 9 percent of Britons admit dumping a partner by sending a cell phone text message, and among those aged 15-24 the figure rises to 20 percent. The handwritten "Dear John" letter apparently is on the way to being replaced by "Dear John. We're thru :-( "

The mobile phone also has become a magnet of infidelity testing. Forty-five percent of women owned up to secretly checking the text messages on their partner's phone, compared with 31 percent of men.

www.mori.com

www.sicap.com

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0126 or bainbird@gazette.com