If you believe your e-mail account has been recently hacked, then you could be opening yourself up to financial exposure. This is a recent FBI fraud alert. Scammers who have hacked your e-mail account look for e-mails to and from your banks, brokers, or other financial institutions. Then they (the scammers posing as you) send out e-mails to those companies asking that funds be wired to them from your account. If you think you're in this situation, notify your financial institution and warn them your e-mail account has been hacked, and to take the appropriate steps to protect your accounts.
If you receive bounced e-mails that you didn't send, your e-mail password has been altered, or friends have told you they've received emails from you and they knew it wasn't you, then be on high alert.
Then notify your ISP or wherever you keep your e-mail account that you've been hacked, and change your password, especially if you're using Hot Mail, Yahoo, or some other generic e-mail account.
One of the safest ways I've found is to use your own domain name as your e-mail account. Register a personal domain name with Godaddy.Com, get an e-mail account to go with it, then set that e-mail account up to the highest spam setting there is. Both GoDaddy and Gmail do a pretty good job of protecting your accounts. Read more about all this at one of my older sites, DigitalShores.Com.
The IRS, You, and Your Computer
Keep your tax information safe and secure by using only an e-filing service that is found on www.IRS.gov. Do NOT file using Wi-Fi --- file from a computer that is plugged in to your home network. Keep your antivirus protection up to date, and ignore and delete completely any e-mails saying they are from the IRS, WHY? The IRS only communicates with taxpayers through the USPS.
