Income Taxes

[Cee]

Not sure about buying it at a store. My credit union offers it online for about $20 and I use it there.

wow , that's an even better deal. I better call up mine and tell them i need special deals of 20 also.

[Sean]

Be aware that the names of legitimate institutions such as Santa Barbara Bank & Trust, Sun Trust Bank, CitiBank, PayPal, etc. frequently appear in phishing attempts. Whether by email, "forged" websites or other means, phishing scams attempt to mimic these legitimate businesses, leading unsuspecting users to provide sensitive information. The legitimate businesses are, in fact, victims themselves of these scams.

If you receive an email, phone call or any other request asking you to verify your account details or provide any other sensitive information -- especially if it appears to be from an institution or service with which you do business -- be sure to contact the "real" company to verify the legitimacy of the request. Most of the time, you'll find such requests to be fraudulent.

Additional resources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

• http://www.antiphishing.org/

• http://www.microsoft.com/protect/you.../identify.mspx

[TexansFan]

Good post Sean. The only reason I know the name of Santa Barbara Bank and Trust is that when I finish my taxes it states this is where my refund will come from. I have never been directly linked to them from Turbo Tax nor have I ever had to send them any personal info.

[WileOut]

That may be a scam mo, but what makes it a really good scam is the fact that there are SunTrust banks all over the place down here. Likely that same email found its way into many real SunTrust customers inboxes, and those are the people they were targeting.

https://www.suntrust.com/portal/server.pt

[WileOut]

From the suntrust website linked above:

"Be on the lookout for phishing emails that appear to come from SunTrust. These fraudulent emails may tell you to update or confirm your account information as a result of a security update, technology upgrade, or routine maintenance.

SunTrust will never trade, rent, or sell your personal information – including email addresses – to anyone. For more information on our privacy policy, visit our Privacy section on this SunTrust Web site.

For the latest information on SunTrust-identified fraudulent email, please visit the Fraud Alerts page"

[pavyracer]

Best way to prevent identity theft. Marry a guy with an unpronouncable, unspellable name that is 20 letters long. No way they would like to be you.