AC

The growing popularity of tax preparation software has led to a rise in e-mail scams targeted at do-it-yourself taxpayers. Intuit, parent of TurboTax and numerous other tax preparation products, has seen a "marked increase" this year in reports of fraudulent e-mails that claim to come from it , says spokeswoman Julie Miller. Recent examples of bogus e-mails claiming to come from Intuit included one with "Your Intuit.com order confirmation" in the subject line. Another subject line read: "QuickBooks Security Notice." In addition to stealing financial info, some of these phishing e-mails contain fake Web links that could download viruses. Reasons identity thieves target tax software providers: •Volume. Spammers who send mass e-mails have a good chance of hitting a large number of tax software users. More than 24 million taxpayers used TurboTax last year; more than 50 million purchased some kind of Intuit product, Miller says. •Confusion. TurboTax, H&R Block and other...