The Internal Revenue Service have released a statement about the identity thieves that used their online service to access tax return information for over 100,000 U.S. households.
The tax agency said that the criminals have stolen Social Security numbers as well as other key data in order to gain unauthorized access to the accounts. The thieves made an attempt on 200,000 accounts resulting in success for half of them, according to Fox News.
The IRS have revealed details about the stolen information from their service. The information that was compromised was from prior years’ returns which helped the thieves to file for fake refunds.
The information was obtained by using a system called “Get Transcript” in which the thieves had to clear a security screen requiring knowledge about the taxpayers including their home address, filing status, date of birth and Social Security number.
“The IRS notes this issue does not involve its main computer system that handles tax filing submission; that system remains secure,” the agency said in a statement.
The system was accessed from February through mid-May and has now been temporarily shut down.
“In all, about 200,000 attempts were made from questionable email domains, with more than 100,000 of those attempts successfully clearing authentication hurdles,” the agency said. “During this filing season, taxpayers successfully and safely downloaded a total of approximately 23 million transcripts.”
Even though tax returns themselves carry a critical amount of personal information that could aid in identity theft, the IRS were led to believe that the thieves already had a large amount of personal information about the victims prior to the access.
“Taxpayers must know that the information they send to the IRS is secure,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in a written statement following the announcement. “And hackers who would steal that information must know that they will suffer severe consequences for their crimes.”
The IRS are now in the process of notifying all of the taxpayers whose information was accessed illegally.
