Lately many businesses and their employees have been victims of scams intended to obtain employees’ personal data and information. With W-2s going out and it being tax season, scammers are trying to hack and obtain employees’ personal information and W-2s to file false tax returns and exploit such information in other serious ways.

A common scam that we are seeing is that a scammer will send an email to someone in the company using a misleading email address and signature block that is as identical as possible to a company officer or owner. The email will ask the employee to reply and send certain personal information and W-2s for the company’s employees. The scam is sometimes successful because the email address and signature block will look like the email address of an officer or owner of the company, but will have one letter or number that is different.

Please be aware of any email requesting employee personal information or W-2s, and please let all employees with access to such information know that such scams are happening right now. Please be sure to check that any email that involves an employee’s personal information is received from and sent to a proper person. In the event of a data breach, the employer must notify its employees of the data breach and may potentially have liability for any losses sustained by employees who are subject to a data breach.