We have another reason for your clients to value their favorite tax professional! We are always looking to build our relationship with you by helping you help your clients.
The latest hacker news – It’s eerie how simple it is for hackers to create an IRS account. It is very important to create an IRS.gov account before the hackers have a chance to establish one. They only need some basic information about you to get in such as name, social security number and address. Questions that are populated by the knowledge-based authentication system (KBA) “security software” are multiple choice and can be figured out easily by guessing or process of elimination.
As soon as the hackers are in, they request a transcript of your last return. Once received, they take the information and use it to file fraudulent returns under your name. This story of Michael Kasper’s experience from KrebsOnSecurity will give you the chills. According to his encounter, once hackers get the return filed and approved it is near impossible to stop them.
There are also hackers hijacking Social Security accounts in the same fashion. When they have control of the account, they withdraw social security benefits.
In an effort to keep them safe, please tell your clients to go to IRS.gov and SSA.gov and create their accounts as soon as possible. Once the accounts are created, they can choose challenge questions and the answers must be typed instead of multiple choice. This makes the accounts harder to break into.
It only took me a few minutes to set up each account and now I know my chances of getting my refund next year before someone else does are greatly improved.
