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IRS Warns of Cybersquatters: Be Careful Where You Reveal Personal Data

If you’re paying taxes to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service there is only one URL you need to know: IRS.gov.

By Dave Gradijan

Page 2

The IRS could do more to address the cybersquatting problem, said Enrico Schaefer, an attorney with Traverse Legal who specializes in domain name disputes. "This IRS press release is of zero value," he said. "When someone ends up at IRS.org, .net and .com, they think it’s affiliated with the government and they never see this. They would be much better served by simply taking control of those domains."

The IRS could do this under Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ uniform domain-name dispute-resolution policy, he said.

In 2001, the government of Canada used this procedure to claim a total of 31 Web domains including Canadiancustoms.com, Thebankofcanada.com and Thegovernmentofcanada.com.

Representatives of IRS.com, IRS.org and IRS.net could not be reached immediately for comment.

-Robert McMillan, IDG News Service

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