Protect Yourself: Beginner's Guide to Tax Fraud

There's no peak season for scamming, spamming, and phishing, but the number of insidious attacks are on the rise and frequently occur during peak periods of online activity: holidays and tax season, for example.

The basic rules for keeping safe involve a combination of common sense, a bit of savvy, and some good tools.

1. Pick a Tough Password: No, not your dog's name and not your mother's maiden name. A good password should have a combination of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and a symbol (&$#) thrown in for good luck.
2. Know the Signs of Fraudulent Emails: An alarm should go off in your head when you receive an email that tells you that you've won something, you must do something in the next five minutes, or if you don't update some piece of personal information you're going to lose your big chance. Normal businesses don't exert those sorts of pressure, nor do they ask you to update your personal records via an email. Fraudsters will often send you a link via an email that takes you to a site that looks just like a real site for a bank or business. The fake site often includes a form for you to fill out with personal information. (This is a classic phishing site.) You should not divulge any information to a site that you get to from an email link without some careful checking. Even the security seal or lock that used to be an indication of a safe site is now duplicated by fakesters. A good place to find out more about newly reported phishing sites is the Anti-Phishing Working Group page, pictured here.
3. Keep Tools Up to Date: The tools for detecting spam (unwanted emails), scams (fraud on the web), and phishing (sites looking for personal or financial information) continue to improve. Make sure your web browser is the most current version (Internet Explorer 7 or Mozilla Firefox 2, for example).Your service providers and search engines have downloadable toolbars that help you keep safe from spam and junk mail, too. Download toolbars from any one of the following: Yahoo!, MSN, Earthlink.
4. Keep Accounts Current: Check your credit card accounts and banking accounts by logging on to those sites frequently and eyeballing your activity. You want to detect fraud or problems quickly and resolve them immediately. A report in InformationWeek finds that credit unions are showing the biggest growth as phishing targets, with a 584 percent increase this year, followed by banks and insurance companies.
   
5. Consider New Technology: Norton 360 from Symantec is constantly monitoring for fraudulent web sites and McAfee SiteAdvisor has a free tool to tell you whether a URL is safe to visit or not.
6. If You Are Scammed: Tell someone. Report it to your service provider or organizations such as Antiphishing.org (http://www.antiphishing.org). Forward a copy of your email to the FTC at spam@uce.gov. The more they know about the specific offense the less likely it can happen again.

And remember, during tax season we all pass numbers around via email, to and from accountants, workers, and employees verifying all sorts of facts. Keep things like your Social Security number and your various account numbers off of email. You'll sleep better.