Tax Fraudsters Stealing Companies’ Databases of W-2s To File Your Taxes Before You Do

(Alberto Cueto)

You’re great at security: you manage your long, secure passwords effectively, you shred all of your sensitive documents thoroughly, and you check your credit report and your online statements frequently. Good job! But all the micromanaging in the world can’t prevent you from being a victim of tax fraud if a hacker intercepts your W-2 and all of the information in it before it ever even gets to you.

That’s what your enterprising criminal mastermind is up to these days, reports security expert Brian Krebs. Krebs (who you may remember as the guy who broke the news of 2013′s Target data breach) says that scammers are gaining access not to individuals’ materials, but instead are going big: directly to the HR departments of the companies that employ dozens or hundreds of people.

The hackers gain entry to HR software at “compromised organizations” and dig around until they find themselves a database full of W-2 forms. Once scammers have access to that giant pile of forms, they immediately try to file federal returns on all of them. Then all they need to do is misdirect the money from a refund back to their own scammy pockets:

Successfully-filed returns are routed to prepaid American Express cards that are requested to be sent to addresses in the United States corresponding to specific “drops,” or co-conspirators in the scheme who have agreed to receive the prepaid cards and “cash out” the balance — minus their fee for processing the bogus returns.

Krebs found that one particular piece of third-party payroll software, Ultipro, seems to be the favored target. The problem doesn’t seem to be with the software itself, though. At least, not according to the company that makes it. A marketing executive for that company, Florida-based Ultimate Software, told Krebs that the security hole isn’t an issue of a code vulnerability that they can fix, but is instead “the result of stolen login information on the end-user level.”

Meaning: someone manages to steal an HR employee’s username and password, logs into the system masquerading as that employee, and then steals all the information they need for a profitable wave of identity theft.

From there, it takes the bad guys very little time to try to file all those fake returns, because they’ve engineered software to do it for them. The crimeware, as Krebs calls it, can take all the data and methodically fling it at an e-filing service — in this case, H&R Block’s. And the nefarious evildoers behind it have found a way to profit from it twice over: not only are they committing tax fraud, but they’re also licensing the software to others so that they can do the same.

Tax return fraud is nothing new; the concept has been around forever. The sheer scope and near-automation of the process afforded by the digital era are newer, though. The IRS issued an estimated $4 billion in fraudulent refunds in 2012 alone. So far, Krebs reports, this particular scam seems tied to over $1 million in fraud.

Today is the deadline for filing your 2013 federal taxes. Hopefully the procrastinators among us sliding their returns in just under the wire won’t encounter any problems. But if you do find out at 11:59 tonight that someone else pretending to be you got there first, take these steps to start getting the situation sorted out.

Crimeware Helps File Fraudulent Tax Returns [KrebsOnSecurity]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

Record Players For Cars Seemed Like A Good Idea In 1956

The Norelco Auto Mignon held one 45 RPM record. One song. That’s it. (Consumer Reports)

The history of consumer goods is littered with brilliant ideas that weren’t quite ready for public consumption yet. In the ’50s, if you wanted to listen to some music in your vehicle, your choices were listening to the radio or forcing your family members to sing. Until the invention of the Highway Hi-Fi in-car record player changed all that. Or could have, if it had caught on with the public.

You know, records: those large, flat vinyl discs susceptible to scratches and prone to skipping that people used for playing music for much of the 20th century. In a world without consumer magnetic tape players, how else were you going to transport music into vehicles? Multiple companies thought that turntables for the car were fantastic and commercially viable ideas. They were not. Consumer Reports unearthed this bit of semi-forgotten tune-blasting history from the late ’50s and early ’60s.

The first in-car record system was the Highway Hi-Fi, available on some Chrysler vehicles beginning in 1956. The system cost the equivalent of about $1,700 in 2014 dollars, and could only use proprietary 7″ records when the system debuted. It came with a handy selection of records: Broadway musicals, radio drama selections, and pop tunes. You could order additional records from Columbia and a later version of the system accepted standard 45 RPM records.

After the demise of the Highway Hi-Fi, RCA introduced a similar, cheaper system. Naturally, the predecessors of our tune-testing colleagues down the hall at Consumer Reports tested it to find out whether it was worth buying. The in-car Victrola cost only $410 in today’s dollars–not cheap, but not ridiculous, either. It held 14 records, which was good for a few hours of music or talk if you bought extended-play 45 RPM discs and wanted to listen to everything in the player. (A 45 RPM record is one of those 7-inch discs that holds maybe one song on each side.)

A competing system from Norelco only held one standard 45, so the driver would have to swap out the disc or maybe hit “repeat” after every song. Also, testers noted that the turntable ran fast, resulting in quicker, higher-pitched music than was intended.

Give your car stereo’s cassette, CD, or integrated digital infotainment system an affectionate pat the next time you get in your car. Their innovative ancestors weren’t marketplace successes, but driving a car with only a radio is now almost unthinkable.

Record players were the infotainment systems of the 1950s and ’60s [Consumer Reports]

How the Highway Hi-Fi Record Player Was Invented for Chrysler Products [Imperial Club]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Walkmans Are Totally Ridiculous To Kids Who’ve Never Made An Awesome Mix Tape Before

Nope. Not a phone.

There are probably many remnants from our not-so-far-off past that sure, seem a bit archaic — remember when you had to rent a VCR from Blockbuster? — but because we lived through technology like cassette players and video stores, it’s just fun nostalgia. For kids who never had to hone their fast-forwarding skills to hit just the right song or labor over mix tapes though, something like a Walkman is downright weird.

Benny and Rafi Fine, or The Fine Brothers, have had a successful run with their YouTube series showing kids reacting to unfamiliar things. This time it’s no different, with “What the heck is that?” as the common sentiment when they’re faced with a Walkman.

And no, children, not everything is a phone. Back in my day, we had one phone line and a very short cord, and if you wanted to stay up playing games and talking to your friends on the Internet all night your dad would be pretty peeved about the AOL bill.

Unless you’ve ever felt the sweet satisfaction of a perfectly executed mix tape — WITHOUT any weird radio DJs piping in on it — then you just won’t understand, kids. You just can’t.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Consumers’ Evolving Shopping Habits Mean There Aren’t As Many Jobs In Retail

(Erin Nekervis)

Some days it’s hard to motivate yourself to go to the mall to shop, it’s just easier to shop online. We’ve all had those days, okay, maybe it’s just me, but still, tendencies like that are creating a problem of sorts for retail workers. The more efficient we’re becoming at buying our goods, the fewer retail workers are needed a new report shows.

Retail is constantly evolving, from shopping online to big box stores popping up in every town. But while those changes might seem great for consumers, they aren’t so welcome for retail workers, The Atlantic reports.

The retail industry added just 49,000 jobs between 2001 and 2013, meaning it really didn’t grow at all.

The Atlantic likens the rather stagnant growth in the retail sales workforce to two main causes: the Amazon Effect and the Walmart Effect.

One reason why shopping retail has become more efficient is that you can simply do it from your home. Instead of walking up and down aisles of the local department store, you can mark of each item on your shopping list with a quick click of the mouse. If consumers are shopping more online, there is less need for workers to be stocking shelves or working cash registers.

The Walmart Effect works similarly. Each employee at Walmart does the work of about 1.4 local retail workers, the Atlantic estimates. So, when a new supercenter opens a county will likely lose 150 jobs.

(The Atlantic)

The most tell-tale sign that things have changed is the difference in job growth between retail outlets.

Department stores have lost more than 200,000 jobs this since 2000. Additionally, specialty stores, like book stores, computer stores and photo stores, have mostly disappeared from the retail landscape. Instead, big box stores have taken over, adding nearly 500,000 jobs.

The Sad, Slow Death of America’s Retail Workforce [The Atlantic]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Social Security Administration Quits Seizing Tax Refunds To Pay Decades-Old Debt

(frankieleon)

Last week, the Washington Post publicized a disturbing new practice of the Social Security Administration and Department of the Treasury: holding on to taxpayers’ refunds in order to cover old debts. These were decades-old debts, usually Social Security overpayments made to the taxpayer’s late parents. There was an overwhelming negative reaction to the Post story, and people affected contacted their representatives in Congress. Now the Social Security Administration says that they’re ending the practice.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time–a little-noticed section of the 2008 federal farm bill did away with the 10-year statute of limitations on debts to the government, and the feds set up an infrastructure to take these debts out of individual taxpayers’ refunds. Sounds reasonable enough if the debts were incurred by the taxpayer during their adult life, but that isn’t always what happened.

The Social Security Administration sought overpayments from the ’50s and ’60s, made to people who are now deceased. Dead recipient? No problem: the Social Security Administration would simply start with the recipient’s oldest child, find any siblings with income who were owed tax refunds, and go down the line, taking their tax refunds until the debt was satisfied.

In some cases, the government couldn’t even prove to the ostensible debtors who had received an overpayment in the first place. They also didn’t do anything sensible like send letters to living relatives of the person who received an overpayment so they could straighten out the issue before having their tax refunds taken away.

Good news: the Washington Post reports that the government has responded to taxpayers’ reasonable outrage at this program. Acting Social Security Commissioner Carolyn Colvin released a statement yesterday explaining that they’ll stop sending the names of intergenerational deadbeats over to the Treasury Department:

I have directed an immediate halt to further referrals under the Treasury Offset Program to recover debts owed to the agency that are 10 years old and older pending a thorough review of our responsibility and discretion under the current law.

Well, that’s good. Maybe they should have looked into that whole “responsibility and discretion” thing before using this program to retrieve overpayments from the ’60s.

Social Security stops trying to collect on old debts by seizing tax refunds [Washington Post]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Amazon’s Algorithm Evolves To Suggest Just The Right Stuff For Drug Deals

Very helpful, Amazon.

Listen, Amazon. There are lots of things a person might use a scale for, various things that need weighing and so forth. But if you happen to be in the market for a particular scale that happens to be popular with drug dealers, Amazon’s purchase recommendations algorithm thinks you might be in the market for say, plastic baggies and rolling papers.

“Silly Amazon, what do I need a ‘spice’ grinder for?” you might be chuckling, as did one Redditor who discovered the online retailer’s drug-related savvy and noted, “Oh great, now Amazon thinks I’m a drug dealer.”

Turns out if you search for a particular scale, the AWS-100 digital model seen here, Amazon knows that other people who bought that scale went on to buy various and sundry items related to the drug trade, including: Pipe screens, a rolling tray with papers included, the Air Tight Odorless Medical Jar Herb Stash Medicine Container, a drug testing kit and of course, the TAP DAT ASH ashtray.

Of course, it’s not like Amazon is intentionally telling you how to go out and be the best drug dealer you can be, but when one person is in the business of buying certain items, well, others might be too, and Amazon is prepared to be helpful.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

‘Scroogled’: Microsoft’s Junior High Attempt To Shame Google Comes To An End

Is Microsoft ready to take our advice and devote its resources to developing great products consumer will benefit from? It’s possible, but we aren’t psychics so the future remains a mystery. Nevertheless, now that the company has all but put the kibosh on their cringe-worthy competitor-bashing campaign, they have one less production distraction.

Microsoft has finally put their Google-attack ad campaign, “Scroogled,” behind them following recent reorganizations at the company, Business Insider reports.

According to officials with Microsoft the campaign is being put the bed, unless, of course, there’s something particularly loathsome from Google that makes Microsoft want to return to its punching bag.

“We are always evaluating and evolving our marketing campaigns. There are times when we use our marketing to highlight differences in how we see the world compared to competitors, and the Scroogled campaign is an example of this,” a spokesperson for Microsoft tells Business Insider. “Moving forward, we will continue to use all the right approaches and tactics when and where they make sense.”

Microsoft’s rather sad attempt to poke fun at its competitor included using a “Scroogled” online store full of tshirts, hats, and mugs. Products featured phrases like a Chrome logo in a trench coat, “Keep Calm While We Steal Your Data,” “We’re Watching You” and Microsoft’s favorite dig, the “Scroogled” logo.

While we’re not sure if Microsoft will actually spend the time it once devoted to making clever puns for Google-bashing on anything useful, it certainly couldn’t hurt.

Microsoft May Finally Abandon Its Silly Anti-Google ‘Scroogled’ Ad Campaign [Business Insider]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Science Validates The Role Of Snacks In Keeping Couples From Going To Bed “Hangry”

(frankieleon.)

You know that feeling where if you don’t get something in your stomach right this very minute you are going to chuck the entire contents of this dresser against the wall, so help me? Being hungry can make you extra angry, say scientists who are doing us all a huge favor by validating the phrase “hangry,” meaning you should have a snack if you’re in a spat with your significant other to counter that phenomenon.

In a study released yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers propose that low blood sugar can make spouses touchy or, as I often put it when it’s past my usual meal time and I’m stuck on the train, a combination of hungry and angry — hangry, as noted by one Ohio State University psychology researcher.

“We need glucose for self-control,” the lead author of the study tells the Associated Press. “Anger is the emotion that most people have difficulty controlling.”

During the study, researchers monitored 107 married couples for three weeks, measuring their blood sugar glucose levels each night and asking participants to stick pins in a voodoo doll representing their spouse. For those unfamiliar, the more pins there are in the doll, the angrier the person sticking them in there is.

And lo and behold, the lower the blood sugar levels, the pricklier the dolls were — people with the lowest blood sugar scores pushed in twice as many pins as those with the highest levels.

But it’s not like we’re all itching to stick it to our significant others. Around 70% of the time, no one put any pins into the dolls at all, for an average of only a bit more than one pin a night per person in the entire study.

Then there are the very hangry — three people put all 51 pins in at once, with one person doing that twice.

Researchers suggest that gnoshing on a candy bar or some other snack might be a good idea if you’re about to talk about a titchy topic, but fruits and veggies are always best for keeping up blood sugar levels in the long run.

Again, this is one study, so if chocolate doesn’t fix things, there might be other avenues you’ll need to explore.

Study: Snack Might Help Avoid Fight With Spouse [Associated Press]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Startup Offers Free Printing On College Campuses In Exchange For Ads On Pages

Is there any service in your life that you wouldn’t mind getting for free if it were ad-supported? Even as we work in “paperless” offices, some things need to exist as hard copies. For college students, there are enough items in need of printing out that a student-run startup now offers free printing…in exchange for ads plastered on each page.

At first glance, this seems like a terrible idea, but that’s because we aren’t thinking like college students. The company, Freenter (get it? Free printer) is based on a similar company that’s currently thriving in South Korea, where the founders are from. They launched the service at their school, the University of Chicago, and are now expanding it to other campuses.

Students who are part of the program can get up to 100 color pages printed for free each month. Color, that’s key, because it means that the ads print out in full color too.

Of course, the company isn’t really about providing free printing to students: it’s about serving up fresh, unmolded new consumers to companies like Citibank and (of course) Papa John’s.

Korean Startup Turns Free Printing Into a Moneymaker [Wall Street Journal]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Teenagers Decide New Cool Thing To Do Is Make Copycat Airline Bomb Threats On Twitter

Sigh.

I don’t envy teenagers — it’s just so hard to keep up with the coolest trends. Like are we still saying “for shizzle?” Are high fives acceptable? But if all your friends started tweeted fake bomb threats to American Airlines just because one Dutch girl did, would you throw yourself off that cliff, too?

Perhaps these rapscallions are ticked off that someone dared to arrest one of their ranks, or maybe they just ran out of hoops to roll down the street and rocks to kick (both available for iOs and Android, obvs). But for whatever reason, a slew of teens have been busy tweeting bomb jokes at American, reports the Washington Post.

And as is the way with many Internet taunts, many of them are poorly spelled, come from accounts touting extreme love of teen stars and they’re well, childish. Some are tweeting at Southwest Airlines as well, which wasn’t involved in the Dutch teen’s incident but whatever, kids will be kids.

A sampling, with Twitter handles removed because again, these are children or at least young people we don’t know:

“@AmericanAir The bomb goes of in 3 hours”

“@AmericanAir I have a bomb under the next plane to take off”

“@AmericanAir You really seem to not care that i’m about to bomb your plane that’s headed to Paris. Btw, my name is Ahmed.”

“@AmericanAir Hello, I’m eduardo. ago a couple of weeks were warned, i´m ignored. you will pay the consequences. Bomb! HAHAHAHA

“.@SouthwestAir I bake really good pies and my friends call me “the bomb” am I still allowed to fly?”

Sigh. Not only does this not bode well for the future social media presence these whippersnappers will bring to the table when they’re adults with disposable income, but it mucks it up for the rest of us when airlines are busy responding to silly threats and jokes instead of going about their usual customer service duties.

Peer pressure is strong, guys. I get it — I once wore flannel shorts over leggings outside of the house, on purpose. But stop it, please, and grow up.

Dozens of teenagers are now tweeting bomb jokes to American Airlines [Washington Post]

You can follow MBQ on Twitter where she will try to serve as a good role model at least so far as not making threats is considered: @marybethquirk

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist