Thieves Nab IRS PINs To Hijack Tax Refunds

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You know that IRS tool that is supposed to protect identity theft victims? Guess what? It's vulnerable to identity thieves.


The IRS’s preferred method of protecting tax refund victims from getting hit two years in a row — the Identity Protection (IP) PIN — has already been mailed to some 2.7 million tax ID theft victims. The six-digit PIN must be supplied on the following year’s tax application before the IRS will accept the return as valid. As I’ve noted in several stories here, the trouble with this approach is that the IRS allows IP PIN recipients to retrieve their PIN via the agency’s Web site.
 
My co-worker came in today and told me her and her husband were a victim of this. Come on IRS really?
 
iNViSiGOD said:
My co-worker came in today and told me her and her husband were a victim of this. Come on IRS really?
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Yup, really. This is government in all of it's virtue. It is showing you on a daily basis how utterly inept, corrupt, feckless it is. It won't change, but will get worse as it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and the IRS is one of the worst culprits in the three letter alphabet department system. This will only get worse. I imagine already that hackers have probably grabbed entire returns. Imagine that scenario and how utterly fucked up that is.
 
If there ever was a reason for simplifying the tax code, this is it. It's asinine that the agency responsible for collecting taxes is paying out those same taxes to people all over the world because of their incompetence. I wonder just how many millions are lost every year to this kind of crap.
 
They should go to Apple to figure out how to properly secure peoples' credentials :whistle:.
 
But wait, it's worse!

The best way to make sure you don't get scammed by someone else filling out your form and collecting the return is to file early. However, the guvmint set a deadline of March 31st for employers to supply their employees with a 1095-C (employer provided health insurance) which is required to file. Some employers are providing this form early; most are not.
 
I got my 1095-C at the end of January with my W-2, but I'm still waiting on my damn 1098-E...
 
Just make it so you have to pay every year, nobody is going to try to steal that return.
 
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Fortunatlly I already have mine back with out issue. This is so lame, we have a weak stick terrorist president who is more interested in releasing proven terrorist from gitmo than ensuring the security of the American Consumer. Chains for all politicians.
 
I filed my returns on February 1st. Both refunds came back really quickly.

But yeah, the system is stupid. It wanted a pin for my wife but the IRS site wouldn't provide it. The other choice was to make one up so she did that.

A couple days after that is when the IRS systems crapped out.
 
This is pretty depressing that the IRS has been hacked yet again. We should elect a CEO of a major technology corporation instead of a politician for president and all major government positions for that matter.
 
midnightfrolic said:
This is pretty depressing that the IRS has been hacked yet again. We should elect a CEO of a major technology corporation instead of a politician for president and all major government positions for that matter.
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Not a hack, but able to answer "Knowledge Based Assessment" KBA questions that are usually derived from a credit report.

The problem is that identity in the US is completely broken; everyone's name, DOB, SSN and address is available and with a little digging, mom's maiden name and other historically used personal questions are as well. So for any system you're accessing for the first time - IRS, credit reports, etc, don't have an established relationship with you - thus there isn't any shared knowledge to authenticate other than the aforementioned data. This is used industry wide, not just the IRS.

Not defending the IRS per se but wanting to clarify the underlying issue that is name, dob, SSN and a completely f'ed up identification of people now.
 
better not have nabbed my PIN, first itme I efiled and I'm getting nearly $4k back.
 
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