BigShield eNews

Treasury, IRS Warn of Identity Theft Scheme Involving Bogus E-mail, Web site

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service today warned taxpayers of an e-mail-based scheme that attempts to trick taxpayers into revealing personal information such as social security numbers, driver’s license information and bank and credit card numbers.

In this ploy, unsuspecting consumers receive an e-mail, claiming they are under investigation for tax fraud and are subject to prosecution. The e-mail informs recipients they can “help” the investigation by providing “real” information and directs them to an official-looking Web site, http://deptreas.org/irs/7634//, where detailed personal information must be provided to dispute the charge.

New Google tool for searching computers a privacy risk on shared PCs

Anick Jesdanun, The Associated Press Oct 18 2004
People who use public or workplace computers for e-mail, instant messaging and Web searching have a new security risk to worry about: Google's free new tool that indexes a PC's contents for quickly locating data...