New and sophisticated tax phishing scams are targeting taxpayers, warns Microsoft. These scams impersonate trusted sources and use urgency tactics to steal personal and financial data.

Taxpayers beware! Phishing scams are on the rise again as tax season heats up. Microsoft Threat Intelligence has issued warnings about new and innovative tactics cybercriminals are using to steal your personal information and financial data.

These scams don’t discriminate, but they do target specific groups more heavily. New taxpayers, recent immigrants with green cards, small business owners who file themselves, and older adults are all prime targets because they might be less familiar with tax procedures.

It is also worth noting that these threat actors are getting more sophisticated too. They’re impersonating trusted sources like employers, tax agencies, and even payment processors. They might send emails with blurry or incomplete tax documents to create a sense of urgency and trick you into clicking on a malicious attachment.

These attachments, as per Microsoft Threat Intelligence’s blog post, contain malware that steals your login credentials, or they might redirect you to a fake website that looks like a legitimate tax platform designed to capture your information.

One example scam identified in January involved emails that appeared to be from employers sending tax documents. Clicking on the attached HTML file led to a fake landing page designed to steal the user’s login credentials.

Tycoon and NakedPages – PhaaS

In addition to their blog post, Microsoft Threat Intelligence has also sent out a series of tweets addressing the increasing prevalence of phishing campaigns during the tax season in the United States.

These campaigns, including those associated with notorious phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platforms like Tycoon and NakedPages, are leveraging tax-related themes for social engineering tactics, putting individuals and organizations at risk of financial fraud and data theft.