Is Tax Season is Fraud Season? With over 76 million consumers filing taxes online already in 2008, the opportunities for fraud and theft are enormous. Just a the time of the year that consumers are putting more and more personal and financial data, virus and spyware writers are busy pushing out more variants of their malicious code. So what is a consumer to do?

First of all if you are filing your Federal taxes online, do not file links that are emailed to you to file taxes, type in www.irs.gov into your browser.

Even if you are not filing taxes online but are preparing your taxes on your PC, you still need to maintain your antivirus and antispyware software. Open your security software and go to the Update section and run your updates immediately.

Advice directly from the IRS will tell you that the IRS will not email you or call you requesting information. The IRS will not email you about a Refund, Rebate, Audit or for news regarding the change to tax laws.

So to sum it up, be careful where you file your taxes, the IRS will not email you and make sure that your security software is updated!  ¶ 6:36 AM