If you receive a letter from the IRS regarding the recent IRS data breach, we urge you to contact your advisory firm right away.
With the IRS now saying that thieves actually breached 334,000 taxpayer accounts – not 100,000 as the agency stated in May – you may have concerns about your financial information being compromised.
The Internal Revenue Service announced the new figure Monday, saying that it’s unclear whether information was actually stolen from each person, but everyone whose account was hacked will receive a letter from the IRS in the coming days.
In accord with the IRS statement, we urge all affected taxpayers to take advantage of its offer to provide free credit protection and identity-protection PINs, since next year’s tax returns also could be targeted by these cyber-criminals.
Anyone who is particularly nervous about having their identity stolen should do a credit freeze, as long as they won’t be applying for a mortgage, car loan, or other credit anytime soon, according to the IRS statement.
Be advised that with a credit freeze, each time someone needs to make a large purchase or get a loan, they have to contact the three major credit agencies (i.e. Equifax, Experian, TransUnion) and ask for a “thaw” for a certain period of time.
Furthermore, check out our website blog from August 17 with guidelines for protecting the assets in your accounts at *Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.
[Disclosure: *Dickinson Investment Advisors has selected Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. as primary custodian for our clients’ accounts.]