Lakeland University tries its best to stop those unwanted emails from going through to yours, but sometimes those scam emails get through anyways.

The Internal Revenue Service is warning the professors and students of educational institutions about emails that are impersonating IRS workers. Lakeland explains that “The IRS has received complaints about the impersonation scam in recent weeks from people with email addresses ending in ‘.edu.’ The phishing emails appear to target university and college students from both public and private, profit and non-profit institutions.” Anyone at Lakeland could be contacted by this person, even though Lakeland does have a good blocking system, it could still get through.

Information Technology of Lakeland, George Heimbuch, explains, “our e-mail system does block the great majority of bad e-mails directed towards us.  Unfortunately, the bad actors are always working to get around those protections.”  If someone wants to scam someone, they will find a way to do it even if our systems are looking out for these emails.

On the IRS website, they explain the ways that why would contact someone if they were needing to, “taxpayers will generally first receive a letter or sometimes more than one letter, often called notices, from the IRS in the mail.” The IRS will contact someone y mail instead of phone calls, or emails, or even text messages.

They also do not ask for any information over the phone, ever. Also, another thing they mention is, “Threaten to bring in local police, immigration officers or other law enforcement agencies to arrest people for not paying. The IRS also cannot revoke a license or immigration status. Threats like these are common tactics scam artists use to trick victims into believing their schemes.” So, phone calls that they have anything in them like this, or even those emails that could be going around, remember that the IRS will only contact someone by mail.

The email to look out for would state, “The suspect emails display the IRS logo and use various subject lines such as ‘Tax Refund Payment’ or ‘Recalculation of your tax refund payment.’ It asks people to click a link and submit a form to claim their refund.” Do not click on it as Heimbuch states, “think before you click” (you may recognize that from last October’s cybersecurity month communications – yes there is a whole month dedicated to cybersecurity awareness). Learning more about being safe with scam emails could save someone in the long run because they will not have to deal with what could happen.

If there are any concerns that anyone has please reach out to Heimbuch and the IT Help Desk by calling this number: 920-565-1143.