Good article from Dark Reading on the IRS transcript hack. In case you don’t know what an IRS transcript is, it is the complete log of all of your data and returns at the IRS for at least the past seven years. This includes Form 1040’s showing how much you got paid, how much took from you in taxes, your deductions, charitable contributions, and everything else. Your tax return is a treasure trove of other account numbers (e.g. bank and brokerage account numbers) too. Very handy if you are an ID thief. Not so good if you are the subject of the transcript. The article highlights the drip-drip of the number of compromised people that just keeps growing, from 300,000, to 450,000, to more than 500K. But the OPM hack is far worse.
IRS Transcript Breach Triples in Scope – by Erica Chicowski