IRS Sends Mail: Your Account's Been Hacked

Hundreds of thousands of Americans will soon get letters from the IRS and it's not good news.

The agency will be informing more than 330,000 people that their accounts may have been hacked.

Cyber security expert Michael Dougherty told CBN News there's not much you can do to protect yourself once the government has your information.

The problem is most of the danger is where you have already sent your information -- the government," he said. "Big medical facilities, banks, financial."

"Unfortunately that's where we're defenseless on that right now because that's where the big honeypots are of centralized data and that's where these big bad guys go after first," Dougherty said.

The number of taxpayers who had their personal information stolen is now twice the number originally disclosed in May. Agency officials believe thieves stole the information to claim false tax refunds in the future.

The thieves accessed a system called "Get Transcript." The hackers cleared a security screen requiring personal taxpayer information like Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and street addresses.

The IRS breach wasn't even the biggest one. Earlier this year hackers stole personal information on 25 million Americans from the Office of Personnel Management.

Outside Director of SnoopWall Michael Dougherty from discusses the IRS hack and how you can protect private information.