welcome back everyone millions of Americans are filing their tax returns ahead of next Monday's deadline but tax season can also be an opportunity for scammers to take your hard-earned money Melanie McGovern is the director of public relations and social media for the Better Business Bureau she's here with some much needed advice on how to spot a scam good morning Melanie good morning the IRS says Americans lost 5.7 billion dollars to tax scams that was just in 2022 alone that number Melanie as
you know is incredible to me a lot of us think this is a problem that mostly affects older Americans but we're learning that's not the case younger adults are reporting more scams more losses to BBB scam tracker and the Federal Trade Commission now more than ever and we know during tax season people will get emails saying you need to confirm your bank account for your direct deposit the cammers are using text messages we know those get opened all the time people are using websites they're unfami
liar with putting in all of their personal information it's really important to be vigilant especially when it comes to your taxes it's your social security number your address your name all of that personal information you want to make sure you're using a reputable Source before you put any of that info into any computer or phone yeah to your point Americans are actually 34% more likely to fall victim to fraud any other advice is especially for that younger age group that considers themselves p
retty Savvy especially when it comes to Tech well they haven't they didn't grow they grew up with the internet they're not as skeptical as some of us who are a little older are so they're not thinking this could be fake they're looking at oh what a great price or this is quick shipping things like that especially with online purchase scams you know the data that comes into our scam tracker shows that younger adults lose an average of $200 per trans action where everybody else it's around 7180 so
it's really important to take that extra step do that due diligence look the website up look it up at bbb.org is it a reputable business or is the business profile filled with warnings from BBB that this is not a reputable business this is not a real website you know spend your money elsewhere you know make sure that you're checking before you put in your information what about the people who have gotten scammed what can they do what recourse do they have well you can if you used a credit card
you know reach out to your credit card company see if there's anything you can do on that end um report it report it report it even if you didn't lose money it's really important to report the scam to BBB scam tracker we give that data to the Federal Trade commission's consumer Sentinel so you want to make sure that you're reporting it to us if you feel that you've been scammed through taxes let the IRS know that's really important as well we've seen a lot of people have tax returns filed by sca
mmers for them then they go to file their tax return and the IRS is like no you already filed your return and got your refund so making sure you're keeping track of all of your personal data what websites you're using where you're making purchases really important to make sure that you don't get scammed in the end something I was surprised by is the IRS says nearly a million unclaimed refunds from 2020 are about to expire you urge caution when checking on that why we know that scammers love to s
end fishing emails especially if it's something that pequs your attention like you have money waiting oh okay I'll give you my information you know watch out for those fake emails make sure you're using the real IRS website irs.gov and you're not putting in all your information because remember the IRS has your information you don't need to give them your social security number your checking account number your credit card number things like that so make sure you're not giving all of your inform
ation to a fraudulent website Melanie I have about 30 seconds left but you say do your due diligence do your research I'm assuming assuming a lot of people do do that and still get scammed what else should we know a lot of these fake websites look so real watch that URL make sure it's exactly as it should be there's a thing called typo squatting where if it's uh an i instead of an l a zero instead of an O make sure you're taking a really good look at that before you type anything in okay um yep
that's that's definitely the biggest one and if you get an email that you didn't sign up for and it says filer taxes here be really skeptical about that be skeptical do your research great advice Melanie McGovern thank you so much Melanie thanks for watching go to join nn.com to find newsnation on your television provider and don't forget to click the red subscribe button below to get more of news nation's fact- driven unbiased coverage
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