[Infowarrior] - IRS outsourcing taxpayer emails to India?

[Richard Forno]

From a very competent securitygeek friend......

Begin forwarded message:

> From: (*H*)
> Date: February 8, 2012 8:51:48 PM EST
> 
> 
> In starting to look into tax stuff for the year, I see that the IRS is
> now offering the "free file fillable forms" option which they host via
> Intuit's infrastructure but doesn't force filers to go pick amongst
> a set of sketchy tax-prep companies nobody ever heard of before being
> able to e-file.  From the tutorials and FAQs on irs.gov it looks about
> like one might expect; a web interface into a database entry "in the
> cloud" where you build your return and you can save its state without,
> I hope, having to retain context on your own machine.  Behavior sort
> of like a bank site, or the state variant I used as mass.gov last year.
> 
> Needs all the expected bells-n-whistles enabled in the browser, of
> course, and in trying to explore the "start fillable forms" link I get
> an immediate obscure error.  So much for their "accessibility" pablum.
> There will probably be further rantage once I actually try to go use
> the thing, and it is distinctly within the realm of possibility that
> I'll be filing paper again this year.
> 
> The FAQs also go into the email angle a little, including why mail
> might get blocked and how to try and whitelist it in advance -- by
> treating "irs.gov.website.helpdesk at speedymail.com" as a trusted sender.
> Speedymail.com?!  So I did a little "follow the money" on it...
> 
> It MXes through something calle "affina.com" in Peoria IL, and the domain
> reg records for both it and speedymail.com point to the same registrant
> via NSI.  Looks reasonably legit so far.  But then for yucks I hit
> www.affina.com, and got redirected to www.teamhgs.com, which is an
> outfit called ... Hinduja Global Solutions.  Based out of India, listed
> on the Bombay stock exchange, etc etc.  Website rhetoric slightly
> broken in ways that suggest offshore authorship.
> 
> So the IRS has outsourced all of the email infrastructure that it
> intends to use to have dialogue with millions of American taxpayers.
> 
> We are *SO* pwnd.
> 
> *H*