In April 2004, IRS warned consumers that scam artists were sending emails purportedly from IRS. Consumers received emails claiming they were under investigation for tax fraud and subject to prosecution. The emails contained language telling recipients they could “help” investigation by providing “real” information and directed them to a website that was derivative of IRS site. Consumers were then asked to provide detailed personal information to dispute charge. Since most people fear IRS, one can assume that a large number of people took phishing bait.

Commentary

The Anti-Phishing Act of 2005 is a nice start to combating scam artists that use phishing to pilfer money from consumers. The Act, however, will not put an end to deceptive phishing practices if it is passed. There reason involves jurisdictional issues.

A large percentage of individuals promoting phishing scams reside outside of United States. While they may take notice of law, it will have no discernible effect on their fraudulent scams. Until there is an international response, phishing scams will continue to be a problem. Nonetheless, Senator Leahy should be commended for initiating efforts to deal with this growing problem.

Many holiday rental companies do not know how to set up a form on an enquiry page, if holiday rental company you advertise your property on does not have this facility and your email address is displayed for all to see then contact company and get them to look into this.

SPAM software

You can download software which will scan your email before it enters your email software, like Outlook, you can then block any email coming from that email address, IP address or domain name. That way when emails come in from blocked sender they never appear in your Outlook inbox. I bought some software called Mail Washer, it’s easy to use and doesn’t cost much. If any of you use software to combat SPAM, then let me know and I’ll publish this in next newsletter

Spam blocking websites

I am not too familiar with this type of blocking, but you can subscribe and enter your email details on to a secure website - all emails sent are directed to this website, and sender has to click on a link before it is sent to your inbox. On some of these websites you can either deny or accept emails from sender, and all rejected emails are sent to blacklist folder.