Be on the Lookout: IRS Email Scam Running Rampant

international businessman from Nigeria emails them, that they probably aren't sitting on the deal of a lifetime and just because you get an email in your inbox telling you that you've won a ton of money, doesn't mean that's true either. As consumers become more web-savvy and street-smart, Internet scam artists have to come up with new ways to take advantage of naïve consumers. One new scam actually involves the rip-off artist impersonating the IRS, here's how it works.

You'll get an email in your inbox from the Internal Revenue Service telling you that you're due a refund. It'll look very legitimate, have an IRS letterhead, their official seal, and just about everything. The message will inform you that you are due a small refund, often between $100 and $150. They will provide a link for you to click where you can go and claim your money. If you were to follow that link, they would ask for your checking account number and routing number as well as the "secret access code" that they provide you so that they can direct-deposit the money into your account. If you were to actually respond to the email and fill out the form, the would-be thieves would completely clean-out your checking account. They'd make a bunch of small charges until it started to over-draft.

You can tell these emails are forgeries because they do not come from the irs.gov domain name. Usually these emails end with a ".us" or a ".info" domain name. Instead of getting an email from someone@irs.gov, you're getting an email from something like someone@irsinfo.us. If the email does not end with @irs.gov, it's not from the IRS, period.

You can also tell that these emails are scams because the Internal Revenue Service doesn't communicate with tax-payers by email. They don't even ask for your email address when you file taxes, so there's no way they even could email you if they wanted to. The IRS already has all of the information they need to contact you through traditional means, since you provided it in your tax-forms. If you were really owed a refund, the IRS would send you a letter in the mail with their seal and proper documentation.

These types of email scams are all over the place; Don't fall for them! If you receive something in your email that sound too good to be true, it most definitely is.

Most internet users have wised up to the most common internet scams. People generally know that when an