The FCC has significantly expanded telecommunications carriers’ data breach notification and reporting obligations. Telecommunications carriers, including Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, and telecommunications...more
On March 3, 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), in a 5-4 ruling, agreed with the State of Kansas that it could use the state’s identity theft statutes to prosecute three separate criminal cases where the...more
Tax identity theft continues to be a significant problem for taxpayers. Tax identity theft occurs when criminals use the personal information of individuals and file fraudulent tax returns before the taxpayer does, requesting...more
With data breaches becoming a common event throughout the world, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) has been undertaking a number of initiatives aimed at enhancing its security of taxpayer information and preventing the...more
Synthetic identity fraud (SIF) is a recent phenomenon that scammers have used to circumvent the increasing awareness of traditional identity fraud. Instead of stealing a real person’s identity as with traditional identity...more
The Security Summit, consisting of the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”), state tax agencies, and private-sector tax industry officials, is encouraging tax professionals during the 2019 summer season to take some time to...more
Last week was National Consumer Protection Week. In celebration of that, this post is devoted to protection from tax identity theft. ...more
As tax season winds on, the W-2 form scam has emerged as one of the most dangerous and common phishing email schemes during this time of year....more
State AGs - Coalition of AGs Asks Social Security Administration to Establish Database of SSNs to Combat ID Theft - Forty-three state AGs sent a letter to acting Social Security Administration (SSA) Commissioner Nancy...more
The Social Security Administration (SSA) recently announced that, by spring 2019, it will begin notifying each employer (and third-party payroll company) that has submitted at least one Form W-2 that contains name and Social...more
Atrium Health and its vendor AccuDoc Solutions have released a joint announcement this week that AccuDoc’s database of 2.6 million billing records of Atrium Health’s patients has been compromised by a hacking incident....more
We all know that it is important to protect our social security number. But sometimes companies still try to use the last four digits of our social security numbers as identifiers or to verify identity in some way....more
Social Security Numbers (“SSN”) were originally established by the Social Security Administration to track earnings and eligibility for Social Security benefits. Because a SSN is a unique personal identifier that rarely...more
In a recent Public Service Announcement dated February 21, 2018 entitled “Increase in W-2 Phishing Campaigns,” the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) issued another alert about an increase in phishing campaigns since the...more
This writer has been lamenting for years about the fact that Medicare recipients’ Social Security numbers are included on the face of the card. This is an unnecessary risk posed to Medicare recipients, which are primarily...more
Tax returns and W-2s are information rich documents. Among other things they contain the name and Social Security Number of an employee, as well as information concerning their salary and address, and personal behavior and...more
Employers beware: Companies are experiencing a wave of phishing scams that target employee paychecks. Here is the scenario: An employee receives from a company email account e-mail that mimics a familiar and trusted company...more
As employers prepare to send employees their W-2s for last year by the end of the month, cybercriminals are preparing phishing emails under the guise of company executives requesting personal information on employees. The IRS...more
HR and payroll professionals nationwide have been, and will continue to be, targeted with e-mails apparently sent by a senior executive but actually sent by scammers who ask for a prompt reply with the 2016 W-2s for all of...more
Tax returns and W-2s are information rich documents that contain the name and Social Security Number of an employee, as well as information concerning their salary and address, and personal behavior and characteristics (e.g.,...more
With tax season in full swing, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), state tax agencies, and tax industry groups recently renewed a warning about Form W-2 email spear-phishing scams. ...more
The Internal Revenue Service issued an alert about an emerging phishing email scheme that purports to be from company executives and requests personal information on employees. The IRS has learned this scheme – part of...more
A California federal judge has ruled that a former Uber driver who is suing Uber in a proposed class action case was unable to show that he suffers an immediate threat of identity theft and dismissed the driver’s first...more
I have spent some time over the past few weeks concentrating on steps individuals can take to protect their privacy and identity. But how do you protect your child’s identity?...more
Social Security numbers are one of the highest risk data elements known to mankind. A Social Security number in combination with a name and date of birth (which are publicly accessible) in the hands of a bad person can...more