Not even the presumption you are dead should make you click the link

Oct 13, 2011 12:08 GMT  ·  By

The saying about death and taxes takes a whole different meaning as a new malicious spam campaign that's been spotted in the wild claims a processing error that occurred because you're registered as being dead.

“Our records indicate that the person identified as the primary taxpayer or spouse on the tax return was deceased prior to the tax year shown on the tax form. Our records are based on information received from the Social Security Administration. Based on this information, the tax account for this individual has been locked,” reads the so-called IRS email.

According to MalwareCity, if the victim rushes to click the link contained in the message, he can expect to be served malware or a phishing scheme.

Before jumping to the conclusion that the world thinks you're dead, check out the “reply-to” address which clearly isn't coming from the IRS, but a LinkedIn account.