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IRS: We Have Been Hacked, 100,000+ Taxpayers' Info Stolen

  

May 26, 2015

The IRS has just released a statement about a major online hack that has exposed 100,000+ taxpayers' personal information. The data included Social Security information, address and date of birth. 

These third parties gained sufficient information from an outside source before trying to access the IRS site, which allowed them to clear a multi-step authentication process, including several personal verification questions that typically are only known by the taxpayer. The matter is under review by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration as well as the IRS’ Criminal Investigation unit, and the “Get Transcript” application has been shut down temporarily. The IRS will provide free credit monitoring services for the approximately 100,000 taxpayers whose accounts were accessed. In total, the IRS has identified 200,000 total attempts to access data and will be notifying all of these taxpayers about the incident.

As always, the IRS takes the security of taxpayer data extremely seriously, and we are working aggressively to protect affected taxpayers and continue to strengthen our protocols.

The IRS says it is currently notifying taxpayers whose information was illegally obtained. The complete statement can be found here

#Tax #IntheNews #IdentityTheft #IRS #DataSecurity
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