Short Insights

The COVID-19 crisis has paved the way for scammers to find new ways to steal money. They have set up around 180,000 coronavirus-themed websites, according to the information from Checkphish by Bolster.

The IRS started to distribute its economic impact payments to county-wide households last week.

Non-filers are entitled to stimulus checks, wherein they fill their data into a website provided by the IRS.

Rip-off artists are mimicking the IRS and have begun sending phishing emails for extracting taxpayers’ bank account data.

The COVID-19 crisis has paved the way for scammers to find new ways to steal money. They have prepared themselves to steal data and misguide consumers. For the same, they have set up around 180,000 coronavirus-themed websites, according to the information from Checkphish by Bolster.

Suspicious domain registrations with a number greater than 149,000 are spotted by the security firm. It is labeled with the term stimulus check on them.

IRS begins distributing economic impact payments to county-wide households

The IRS started to distribute its economic impact payments to county-wide households last week. Individuals are entitled to an amount of $1,200, whereas married joint filers are entitled to an amount of $2,400. Besides, households own the eligibility for $500 per child under age 17. What is received is determined by the IRS based on the adjusted gross income as per the 2018 or 2019 tax return.

Per our recent article, American’s were more interested in investing their stimulus checks for buying cryptocurrency like bitcoin as Bitcoin halving is around the corner. Per numerous posts on popular bitcoin subreddit, people have claimed that they are likely to utilize their $1200 stimulus check to buy cryptocurrency.

Non-filers are categorized by the people who are not capable of submitting tax returns as they earn less. And this category of people is entitled to stimulus checks, wherein they fill their data into a website provided by the IRS. This is to directly deposit the money into a bank account. This poses a massive security problem as per what data security says.

Rivka Little, senior vice president of marketing and strategy at Socure had her say regarding this. She added that the information customers are asked to fill in all appropriate information. But all of those data points are prone to breach and are attainable.

Privacy Violations

According to the information from Risk Based Security, a total of 7,098 data breaches occurred last year. It caused exposure of records greater than 15.1 billion.

In a few cases, individuals themselves pave the way for their data breach through social media. With this provision of data, scammers try grasping non-filers’ stimulus payments and try conquering the cash.

Little believes that it is now crucial for financial institutions to note any rise in new bank accounts. Since fraudsters enter consumers’ information to route the money somewhere else.

Scammers try imitating the IRS to get hold of the personal data

Rip-off artists are mimicking the IRS and have begun sending phishing emails for extracting taxpayers’ bank account data. This came to light through Avi Shua, co-founder of Orca Security.

Abhishek Dubey, Bolster CEO stated that scammers misuse the Get My Payment app by imitating the copies of a login page. He further pointed out that taxpayers end up entering their data into the fake page, making it easy for scammers.

Shua warned that one must directly visit the ‘Get My Payment’ site rather than clicking on a link in an email.

Both Get My Payment and the Non-Filer are secure to use, according to IRS spokesman Dean Patterson. He urges taxpayers to visit the IRS.gov site solely to use both the tools. Besides, to rely on the official information to get rid of scams routing people to ambiguous websites.