Sign Up with the IRS before the bad guys do

[Chuckanut]

Here is a warning from Krebs on Security concerning signing up for your IRS logon id before the bad guys do.

Sign Up at irs.gov Before Crooks Do It For You — Krebs on Security

If you’re an American and haven’t yet created an account at irs.gov, you may want to take care of that before tax fraudsters create an account in your name and steal your personal and tax data in the process.

I tried to do it, but since my credit records are frozen, I was unable to do so. Another reason for freezing one's credit records, IMHO.

 

[Chuckanut]

Apparently, the criminals used a willing 'dupe' to get the victim's tax refund.

For starters, the woman who owned the bank account that received his phony refund — a student at a local Pennsylvania university — said she got the transfer after responding to a Craigslist ad for a moneymaking opportunity.

 

[Onward]

I'm poking around IRS.gov and don't see any way to create an account. (?)

 

[unno2002]

Is this the signup site?

Step 1 - Create an IRS e-services Account

 

[audreyh1]

DH and I read that article this morning, and we had no idea about being able to get that info from irs.gov.

I created an account today. Wow - everything is there!

The Record of Account Transcript is very useful to me, because it gives a complete picture of estimated taxes paid in and funds applied from the prior year versus amount owed. Using EFTPS I only got half of the picture - the other half being our tax return. And I had to just hope both sides were talking to each other - now I can verify that the information correct.

You can also find out things like when your return was processed.

The link in Chuckanut's quote worked for us:
http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/Get-Transcript

 

[grasshopper]

Worked for me like audrey1, I liked seeing my est taxes in on place I use Easy Pay and EFTPS, and leave refund dollars for 1st qtr payments. So if everything is recorded here it will keep me happy.

 

[gauss]

I have mailed in the paper forms in the past to get these types of tax transcripts and waited several weeks each time to receive the results.

Was very useful to have up to 10 years of 1099-R / 5498's available once I realized that I would need to track details of the basis for Roth IRAs if I withdrew contributions /conversions and 401k rollovers prior to age 59 1/2.

This will be a much more efficient way to get this information. I created an account today -- I did need to provide answers to questions such as "when was my house built?" etc to validate my identity.

I am a bit concerned that they did not ask for prior year's AGI amount like the "where's my refund" site does. Seems that using data from a prior years tax return would beef up the security around this.

-gauss

 

[audreyh1]

So the takeaway from me from this article is to set up two accounts (and do this before freezing your credit file):

• At irs.gov, set up the account to access your transcripts.
• At ssa.gov, set up your online account.

This will prevent someone else setting up accounts with those agencies using your credentials, and also keep someone from messing with your social security benefits or accessing your IRS detailed tax return information.

A vulnerable agency is still the FTC at annualcreditreport.com. You cannot create an account AFAIK. It looks like each time you request a credit report you are queried for the "soft query" data that appears in your credit file. So someone might be able to obtain a full report if they had some info and then was able to search for more and answer questions correctly.

Since a credit freeze does not prevent you from getting annual credit reports, it seems like someone could still get access to your credit file if they were lucky enough to find enough info. They couldn't open any credit in your name, however, and they couldn't open the above accounts at irs.gov or ssa.gov.

Credit Freeze FAQs | Consumer Information

 

[audreyh1]

I set up my ssa.gov account today too.

 

[LoneAspen]

Does anybody know if a freeze will prevent account creation on the SSA site?

I was going to create the IRS one until I read you can't with a freeze, and I have freezes on all three, and am not going to unfreeze them just to create an account.

 

[mpeirce]

Does anybody know if a freeze will prevent account creation on the SSA site?

Yes.

You can either go into an office to set it up or do a temporary unfreeze (they use just one credit agency - Transunion? - so you don't have to unfreeze them all)

 

[audreyh1]

Experian - ssa.gov is using Experian.

DH will have to go to the SS office to create his account because there seems to be some data dispute and they can override the credit report info there.

 

[gauss]

Well apparently the Bad Guys were quite effective in gaining fraudulent access to many IRS tax transcript accounts.

The IRS announced today that criminals used taxpayer-specific data acquired from non-IRS sources to gain unauthorized access to information on approximately 100,000 tax accounts through IRS’ “Get Transcript” application. This data included Social Security information, date of birth and street address.

IRS Press Release and NPR report follow:

IRS Statement on the "Get Transcript" Application

IRS Reports Theft Of More Than 100,000 Taxpayers' Information : NPR

Thanks, Chuckanut, for the early warning on this.

-gauss

 

[MichaelB]

Thanks for the update and links. Interesting news. I think we've reached the point where credit monitoring should be available to all of us at no charge. Not holding my breath, though.