Tax fraud...How can you recognize a phishing email?

One day you received an "official" email telling you that your tax payment has not been accepted. The accounting is critical and essential, so your business can be a victim of phishing scam.

Phishing scam: is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing.

These days I received the following email:

EFTPS ONLINE

THE ESAIEST WAY TO PAY YOUR FEDREAL TAXES

Since the beginning the orthography shows that it is not a professional and official email...

Your Federal Tax Payment ID: 01037598849 has been not accepted.

Pelase, make sure that all ifnormation you have submitted is crorect and refer to Code R21 to find out the informaiton about copmany payemnt. Pelase cnotact this page if you have any questions:

A Link which you should never make click

and at the end a warning:

You are uisng an Ofifcial United States Government System, which may be used only for authroized purposes. Unauthorized modification of any information stored on this sytsem may result in criminal prosecution....etc.

This warning make more credible or trustful the email...so take care.

Please be careful and pay attention to details. Here some tips for any person-non technical, easy to follow:

1. First read slowly and dont be scared or act quickly.
2. Call the official number from other source directory and confirm about what you received.
3. DONT give sensitive information or data that they should have
4. DONT make click in any link inside the email.
5. The virtual world is the same real one, behave in the same way you do daily with unknown or strangers people.

The antiphishing working group recommends reporting phishing scams here:

• Forward the e-mail to reportphishing@antiphishing.com.
• Forward the e-mail to the Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov.
• Forward the e-mail to the abused e-mail address of the company that is being spoofed (such as spoof@ebay.com). When forwarding spoofed messages, always include the entire original e-mail with its original header information intact.
• Notify the Internet Fraud Complaint Center of the FBI by filing a complaint on its Web site: www.ifccfbi.gov/.

For more information to avoid phishing scams or maintain your email secure with privacy settings http://spamjadoo.com/