Spear-phishing to crack your bank and brokerage accounts If you do not get a prompt response from the IRS, call the Identity Protection Specialized Unit at 80 for assistance. You may be forced to file your tax returns on paper in the meantime. Also complete IRS form 14039, the Identity Theft Affidavit. What action should you take? File a police report and a fraud report with the FTC Identity Theft Hotline (87). And take immediate action if you are informed that more than one return was filed in your name that you owe additional tax or that IRS records indicate that you earned more than the amount of wage you reported. If your information was compromised in the data breach, make a point of filing your annual tax return promptly. While the agency has a task force dedicated to these cons, they are complex and difficult to solve, often taking more than four months to investigate, according to the agency. Victims often get the first inkling of a problem when they file their annual tax returns and the IRS notifies them that another return has already been filed and their refund has been claimed. The agency cites data breaches as one of the main ways that con artists get the relevant information to pull off tax identity theft. These scams involve criminals getting victims' names, addresses and Social Security numbers to file fraudulent tax refund claims. The Internal Revenue Service has been fighting tax identity theft for years. Tax identity theft that could rob you of your IRS refund Even if this tool indicates your data was spared, you can sign up for free credit monitoring for a year and Equifax will also waive any costs entailed in freezing your credit report, if you act within the next two months. Information about the Equifax breach, including a simple tool to tell you whether the company believes your data was accessed in the breach, can be found on the company's web site. Of course, if your data wasn't part of the Equifax attack, giving it out over the phone gives you a chance to join your friends and neighbors in having your data exposed on the dark web. Providing information to a new con artist over the phone simply increases the chance that you'll be victimized.
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