The Internal Revenue Service does not always properly authenticate the identity of taxpayers calling its toll-free assistance lines before providing them with confidential tax account information, according to a new government report.
The report, by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, found that taxpayers who call the IRS-toll-free lines are at risk of having their personally identifiable information inadvertently overheard and disclosed during conversations with IRS employees. TIGTA auditors listened to a sample of audio-taped calls between IRS employees and taxpayers and were able to hear parts of assistors’ conversations with other callers.
IRS guidelines require assistors to fully authenticate callers before assisting them.
Read more on WebCPA.
Frankly, thisis not news. Every year the government has a team assess the security of information of all federal agencies. Many fail or nearly fail according to standards set. I guess the idea of “lead by example” has been forgotten. How are we supposed to trust that our information is safe just because they say so? What surprises me- no big media group has picked this up yet.
Yeah, this site is not exactly a “big media group.” 🙂