Spam Example: Phishing – Internal Revenue Service

Here is a good example of phishing with a nasty little piece of email I received today. These people are pretending to be the government. When you read their site link, you’ll notice the domain isn’t from the IRS. (The actual site is www.irs.gov.) When you click on the URL, they have copied the real IRS site to a “T” – with the exception that any link you click on will only go to one page. This page will ask for your social security number. Note the crazy long URL in your browser.

The crowning jewel of this piece would be all the warnings against criminal activity. If they warn you, they MUST be honest. Sheesh.

If they get your social security number, they can (and will) commit identity theft. Always be suspicious of any email you didn’t request that leads you to enter personal information.

It’s not hard to identify these types of emails after you know what to look for. But, if you aren’t sure about an email, feel free to forward the email to me, or check out Snopes.

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined
that you are eligible to receive a Stimulus Payment.

Please submit the Stimulus Payment Online Form in order to process it.
A Stimulus Payment can be delayed for a variety of reasons.
For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.

To access the form for your Stimulus Payment, please follow the next URL:

http://www.iriscoatings.com/css/index.html

For security reasons, we will record your ip-address, the date and time.

Deliberate wrong inputs are criminally pursued and indicated.

Regards,
Internal Revenue Service

Copyright 2008, Internal Revenue Service U.S.A. All rights reserved.