Consumer Alert
Tax Identity Theft Awareness Week starts today
Ready for tax season? If you’re not ready for tax identity thieves and IRS imposters, you might not be. But breathe easy. Today is the start of Tax Identity Theft Awareness Week, and we’ve got lots of easy ways to learn how to recognize scams and help protect yourself from fraud. 
All this week, the FTC and its partners will host free events to share information about recognizing, avoiding and recovering from the scams and scammers that we see most often during tax season. We’ll ask things like:
- How does tax identity theft happen?
- How is it related to other types of identity theft?
- If your personal information has been exposed in a data breach, are you at greater risk?
- Can you lessen your chances of experiencing tax identity theft? And, if it happens, how do you recover?
For the basics, join us today for our kick-off event, a half-hour webinar hosted by the FTC and the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). Have questions? Call them in during either of two telephone-town hall meetings this Wednesday the 5th, co-hosted by AARP, the FTC, and the U.S. Treasury Department. Or, send them to us during Thursday, February 6th’s Twitter chat.
If you own or operate a small business, you’ll want to be sure to join us on Tuesday the 4th for Protecting Sensitive Business and Customer Information: Practical Data Security Practices for Your Business. Hear from the FTC and IRS about identity theft, the latest imposter scams targeting businesses, and creating a data security plan to protect your customers, employees, and your business. Ask questions, too. If you’re not able to view the webinar, we hope you’ll still listen in.
Find a calendar of all the week’s events and details on how to participate here. All the events are free and open to everyone. We hope you’ll join us!
Search Terms
It is your choice whether to submit a comment. If you do, you must create a user name, or we will not post your comment. The Federal Trade Commission Act authorizes this information collection for purposes of managing online comments. Comments and user names are part of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) public records system, and user names also are part of the FTC’s computer user records system. We may routinely use these records as described in the FTC’s Privacy Act system notices. For more information on how the FTC handles information that we collect, please read our privacy policy.
The purpose of this blog and its comments section is to inform readers about Federal Trade Commission activity, and share information to help them avoid, report, and recover from fraud, scams, and bad business practices. Your thoughts, ideas, and concerns are welcome, and we encourage comments. But keep in mind, this is a moderated blog. We review all comments before they are posted, and we won’t post comments that don’t comply with our commenting policy. We expect commenters to treat each other and the blog writers with respect.
We don't edit comments to remove objectionable content, so please ensure that your comment contains none of the above. The comments posted on this blog become part of the public domain. To protect your privacy and the privacy of other people, please do not include personal information. Opinions in comments that appear in this blog belong to the individuals who expressed them. They do not belong to or represent views of the Federal Trade Commission.
In reply to What do I do if I have been a by NatureGoddess
Did you report the theft at www.IdentityTheft.gov? When you report, you can create a plan to help you recover from identity theft. The plan will help you keep track of what to do.
There is help for people who experienced Tax Identity Theft.
If you need to write letters to remove information from your credit file, or to close an account someone opened in your name, or for other reasons, you can use the Sample Letters from the FTC.