Tax Court "spear phishing" warning issued

[hat tip taxgirl]

The Tax Court has issued a notice about an email scam addressed to those who have cases before it.  As the New York Times reported this morning, hackers and attackers are getting more and more sophisticated.  Not surprisingly, it is harder to tell "good" email messages from "bad" ones.

Here's the content of the notice. DON'T click on the links!

NOTICE: The United States Tax Court has received many telephone calls regarding an e-mail which purports to originate from the Court being sent by a member of the Tax Court's practitioner bar.  This message is an example of "Spear Phishing", which is an e-mail spoofing attempt that targets a specific organization.  The Tax Court is not disseminating any e-mail notice to anyone who currently has a case before this Court. If you receive an e-mail with a subject line that includes the text, "Notice of Deficiency #" followed by a series of numbers or "US Tax Petition", along with a malformed docket number following the format #000-000, and a sender address [email protected] , [email protected], or [email protected], please ignore/ delete the e-mail and do not click any link within the e-mail message.