Any time is a good time for identity thieves to get personal information from people who leave papers containing such information in unlocked mailboxes, but no time is better than tax time, when we receive a number of items that have our names, birthdates and Social Security numbers on them. One way to try to stop the thieves is to contact your local post office and ask to have a hold put on your mail. Leave the hold on until all of your tax documents arrive. That way you’ll be sure they don’t make it out of the post office.
With this one problem solved, there are still others. Firstly, there are those identity thieves who think it is a good idea to try to impersonate IRS personnel. You could get an email purporting to be from the IRS saying that you need to go to a certain website in order to get your refund – and be conveniently supplied with a link to click on. You could get a phone call where the caller says he or she needs your bank account number to process your return. In either of these cases, it’s almost 100% certain that the person that’s contacting you is not from the IRS.
The IRS is aware of these scams and has even set up an email address, [email protected], which you can use to report unsolicited emails. The IRS says that it does not use email as an initial contact point, and it doesn’t need your bank account number to process your return. If you don’t supply it, they can simply send you a check.
When you’re mailing your tax return, if you don’t decide to e-file, you should always go to the post office. Yes, this is true even if you have to drive there with the masses at midnight on the 15th of April. This is the best way to determine (a) that your return will actually get mailed out on time and (b) it will not get misdirected, either accidentally or on purpose, on its way there. If your mailbox doesn’t have a lock on it, you should do this for all sensitive mail, not just especially for your tax return.
For additional protection, and peace of mind, you may want to look at an identity theft protection service. Some, such as LifeLock, even have fraud detection tools that notify you if anyone has changed your address, which thieves do to re-route your mail and get their dirty hands on your private information.
Once you’re done with your taxes, shred any paperwork you don’t need to keep well enough that it will be near impossible for a thief to piece it together again. If you have your tax information saved on your computer, insure that your firewall and your security software are up to date. Put a password on your machine so that others can’t use it if it’s at the office, in a public area or in a place in your home where visitors may get access to it.
Identity theft is not going down. Javelin Research stated that, like in 2008, there were about 10 million identity theft victims in this country in 2009. It’s best not to make yourself a promising target – that’s not where you want your refund to go.