IRS releases additional statement on illegal access to taxpayer accounts
By MoneyTimes
Aug 19, 2015 09:04 PM EDT
Regions
(L-R) Foley & Lardner LLP partner Cleta Mitchell, Common Cause Policy Counsel Stephen Spaulding, Graves Garrett LLC partner Edward Greim, Campaign Legal Center Senior Counsel Lawrence Noble, Waco Tea Party President Toby Marie Walker, Independent Sector President and CEO Diana Aviv, Tea Party Patriots President and co-founder Jenny Beth Martin, Bright Lines Project Chairman Greg Colvin, and American Center for Law and Justice Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow are sworn in before testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee's Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts Subcommittee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill July 29, 2015 in Washington, DC. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen earlier testified to the subcommittee about alleged IRS targeting of political groups for extra scrutiny when applying for tax-exempt status. (Photo : MoneyTimes)
After revealing the real staggering number of accounts hacked by cyber criminals through the "Get Transcript" application, the Internal Revenue Service issued additional reports about the incidents.
In the new statement, the IRS is doing its best to reassure the taxpayers that the agency is doing its best to protect the accounts and information that have been penetrated by the cyber criminals. The agency also keeps reiterating in the new statement that the safety of the taxpayer's data is very important to them.
The IRS will be mailing letters to inform the 220,000 taxpayers whose accounts were accessed by the hackers. The agency will also notify 170,000 other households whose personal information could be at risk to the hacks. Besides mailing the taxpayers, IRS is also offering them free credit protection and Identity Protection PINs as an extra measure of protection. It is also strengthening the "Get Transcript" program's security by improving the identity authentication protocols.
According to the IRS, the cyber thieves already gained access to the taxpayers' data from a third party outside of the agency. This made it easy for the hackers to get through the elaborate authentication protocols under the "Get Transcripts" application. In May, the IRS reported that the hackers gained access to a total of 114,000 accounts. These cyber criminals failed to access 111,000 other accounts because they couldn't get through the final verification step. This prompted the IRS to conduct deeper analysis in a longer period of time including the 2015 filing season on more than 23 million uses of their "get Transcript" system.
In the most recent report from the IRS, the hackers penetrated the Get Transcript verification process and were successful in 220,000 attempts, but they failed in their 170,000 suspected attempts. The IRS is reassuring the taxpayers that it is doing its best to protect the accounts in their system from these cyber thieves.