advertisement advertisement advertisement If you’ve managed to stay employed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, count yourself as lucky, but identity scammers may see you as easy prey. advertisement advertisement And you may only find out you’ve had your ID stolen when you get ready to do your taxes. This is how the scam unfolds: You had a steady paycheck in 2020, but your state sends you a Form 1099-G for 2020 unemployment compensation you never received. Why? Because con artists used your stolen personal data to file for unemployment that the real you isn’t eligible for. Then they cashed the checks that your state sent to them. A form 1099-G is the documentation of taxable income that’s sent both to unemployment recipients and the IRS to report how much money the individuals received and what was withheld. “During 2020, millions of taxpayers were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic through job loss or reduced work hours,” the … [Read more...] about If you’ve been employed during the pandemic, the IRS says beware of this identity-theft scam
The probe into Equifax’s data breach has reportedly sputtered
advertisement advertisement advertisement The head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has reportedly scaled back the probe into how Equifax failed to protect the personal data of 143 million Americans during hacks that occurred between May and July of last year, says Reuters . After Equifax made news of the hack public in September, the then-CFPB director Richard Cordray authorized a full investigation into the breach. However, in November Cordray was replaced by Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s budget chief, and since then the Equifax investigation has “sputtered” according to several government and industry sources. But even if the CFPB is going light on Equifax, the company is still being investigated by every state attorney general over the data breach and their other security problems . … [Read more...] about The probe into Equifax’s data breach has reportedly sputtered