The Internal Revenue Service said identity thieves used its online services to obtain prior-year tax return information for about 100,000 U.S. households, a major setback for the agency that is charged with safeguarding taxpayers' privacy.The IRS said criminals used stolen Social Security numbers and other specific data acquired from elsewhere to gain unauthorized access to the tax agency accounts. About 100,000 more attempts were unsuccessful, the agency said.
Thieves used the information from prior years' returns to help them file for fraudulent refunds, the IRS said.
The IRS said the matter is under review by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration as well as the IRS's Criminal Investigation unit. In addition, the agency said its "Get Transcript" application--which the identity thieves successfully penetrated--has been shut down temporarily.
The IRS said it would provide free credit monitoring services for the approximately 100,000 taxpayers whose accounts were accessed. The IRS said it identified 200,000 attempts to access data and will notify all of these taxpayers about the incident.
This certainly makes me overjoyed that the Administration is planning to digitalize medical records, too.