IRS Identifies 334,000 Taxpayer Identity Theft Victims From Their Own IRS Website

Posted on August 24, 2015

The IRS has identified a total of 334,000 taxpayers who are victims of identity theft off of their own IRS.gov website.

During the most recent tax filing season, the IRS previously learned of identity theft by hackers that used taxpayer identity information to access their Get Transcript application on their website.

The hackers used this information in their efforts to file fraudulent tax returns that claimed refunds. Since that time, the IRS has identified an additional 220,000 breaches of its Get Transcript application.

The IRS stated that it will begin mailing letters to the affected taxpayers and will offer free credit monitoring and identity protection personal identification numbers in order to verify the authenticity of their future tax return filings. It seems that nobody’s data is safe anymore, even if it is in the hands of the IRS.