Text scams imitating the IRS have rapidly grown since 2020

October 3, 2022
Text Scams SMS IRS Impersonation Fraud Prevention SMiShing Phishing US Threat Advisory

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) notified the public in their recent post last September 28 about the rising cases of text scams that leverage their name to swindle data and financial information from victims. The agency found thousands of fraudulent domains tied to text scams (smishing) against taxpayers.

According to an IRS representative’s statement, the campaign leveraging the agency’s name has grown on an industrial scale since thousands of people are at risk of being victimised by the text scams. The past months of 2022 have been challenging for the agency after discovering that large-scale smishing campaigns have sent hundreds of thousands of IRS-themed campaigns toward the targeted taxpayers.

 

The text scams contained messages about COVID-19 relief or tax credits, while some contained messages about helping the targets set up an online IRS account.

 

Emphasising this identified IRS-themed campaign’s threat to the targets, the agency reiterates in its notice that it will, by no means, send text messages or emails to individuals asking for sensitive information and financial data.

Despite the active efforts of the IRS to combat online fraud and scam campaigns leveraging its name, threat actors have also been evolving. They are continually improving their tactics to victimise more people.

One identified tactic used by threat actors is generating thousands of fraudulent domains using automatic algorithms. For instance, a recent campaign revealed that about 36 stolen email addresses were used to create thousands of malicious domains for phishing attacks.

Since the prime targets of these IRS-themed campaigns are taxpayers and accountants, security experts warn them that they should promptly report suspicious text or email messages they receive so that relevant authorities can identify the source of the attacks and stop them.

Following this rise of text scam campaigns, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) added that they would begin to accept comments and recommendations from the public that could potentially help them in addressing the issue.

FCC also said that they are formally launching serious efforts to take comprehensive action and have a renewed look at the standing policies to combat phishing scams that endangers the masses’ safety.

About the author

Leave a Reply