October 16, 2022 - The IRS has issued a warning to taxpayers to be on the lookout for text messages that appear to come from the agency. These messages are being sent out on an industrial scale in an attempt to get recipients click on the links in them and then to get them to provide their personal financial information. While they may look official, they are actually fraud.

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The criminals behind the messages have become quite sophisticated. Just a couple of years ago, they were sending out a much smaller volume of messages and the look-alike fraudulent websites that they built were put together manually. Once a fraudulent site was detected and taken down, they had to start all over again.

Now they are using automated systems to build their websites and algorithms to distribute the text messages and traffic to the sites. This is making much more difficult for law enforcement to take down these scams, and it is also allowing the criminals running these scams to send out a lot more text messages than they used to.

Neither the IRS or any other government agency will ever contact you and then ask for your information. Nor will they ever contact you and ask you for personally identifiable information to "verify your identity." If you receive a call asking you to provide such information, your best bet is simply to hang up. And if you receive a text with links in it claiming to be from the IRS, they are asking that you report it to them at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . It is best if you can forward the text message to them at that address. 

by Jim Malmberg

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