Thinking of filing your taxes online? Might want to think again.

9. "We may be a government agency, but that doesn't mean your data's safe."

One things you may not be thinking about as you file your taxes this year is that the documents you're sending off to the IRS contain virtually every piece of information an identity thief would ever need to drive your credit, and your sanity, into the ground. And considering that data breaches are on the rise -- up 47 percent in 2008 from 2007, according to nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center -- protecting your information, which includes your Social Security number and home address, should be paramount. But a recent report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), an independent IRS oversight organization, casts some doubt on the agency's ability to protect your information. For example, TIGTA says two new systems the IRS is implementing to manage taxpayer accounts and account data were "deployed with known security vulnerabilities in the controls over sensitive data protection, disaster recovery and system access."


Alarming as this information is, it's hardly a new problem at the IRS, says J. Russell George, inspector general for TIGTA. "We've seen this before when they implement a new system. The organization's unwillingness to change its behavior is potentially harmful to taxpayers," he says. (The IRS had no comment.)




See the other nine things the IRS doesn't want you to know:


http://finance.yahoo.com/taxes/artic...n%27t-Tell-You