Tax Day is nearly here, and with it comes tax scams. The U.S. Congressional Joint Economic Committee has issued a scam alert, with less than a week to go until the tax filing deadline. The warning is, unfortunately, needed, given that nearly one in four Americans have reported being victimized by tax season scams, according to March 2026 research by McAfee.

The alert, seen by Mashable, has other alarming findings: During fiscal year 2025, the IRS reported more than 600 social media impersonators of the agency. Spam blocker app Nomorobo found a 400 percent increase in fraudulent calls claiming to be from the IRS between Jan. and Feb. this year. Fake tax websites are also on the rise, with McAfee identifying 43 new ones every day between Sept. 2025 and Feb. 2026.

“Criminal enterprises are exploiting tax season to target Americans, including seniors,” said Joint Economic Committee Chairman and Arizona Rep. David Schweikert in a press release shared with Mashable. Adults 70 years old and older lost more money to fraud than younger adults, according to the median of data collected by the Federal Trade Commission in 2024: $1,650 for seniors 80 and older and $1,000 for 70-79 year-olds, compared to $189-691 for younger groups.

Schweikert is issuing the alert, along with Ranking Member New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan, Vice Chairman Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, and Senior House Democrat Virginia Rep. Don Beyer.

“As Americans file their taxes this month, scammers are deploying an onslaught of attacks — often enhanced by artificial intelligence — designed to steal people’s money,” Hassan stated in the release. “I encourage all taxpayers to review the tips in this bipartisan scams alert so that they can stay vigilant and protect their identities and accounts.”

Here are tips the Joint Economic Committee lays out to avoid common IRS impersonation scams:

• Be wary of phone calls, emails, or social media outreach. The IRS will never message you on social media! The agency will almost always initiate contact by mail, according to the committee.

• Watch out for urgent requests or threats. The IRS will never threaten to call law enforcement or request to see your driver’s license. On that note, the agency will never ask for payment via nontraditional methods such as gift cards.

• You can verify any communications with the IRS directly on the official IRS.gov website.

• You can share an IRS-issued identity protection PIN instead of your Social Security Number.

The committee also urges precaution when dealing with third-party tax services. Here are some tips for identifying non-IRS tax scams:

• Research firms by searching them on sites like the Better Business Bureau. If an offer seems too good to be true, it often is.

• Go to IRS.gov and verify the service’s Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN). If the service doesn’t provide this, avoid it.

• Scammers may pretend to be legitimate third-party tax preparation companies or employees. Verify the provider by visiting the official website and calling the listed phone number.

If you believe you’re a victim of a tax scam, you can report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

Have a story to share about a scam or security breach that impacted you? Tell us about it. Email [email protected] with the subject line “Safety Net” or use this form. Someone from Mashable will get in touch.

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 28 seconds ago

Starfleet Academy was canceled shortly after the end of its first season. Nonetheless, a second season had already been greenlit and filmed, so fans can look forward to more misadventures with their favorite band of space cadets. Even as those fans look forward to what Season 2 brings, though, at least one of the show’s biggest actors regrets that there won’t be a third season to tell his character’s most ambitious story yet.

Robert Picardo reprised his role as the Doctor for Starfleet Academy, and the first season provided a surprise follow-up to “Real Life,” one of his best Voyager episodes. In a recent interview, the actor revealed that he had pitched a Season 3 SFA follow-up to “Living Witness,” where he would encounter a backup version of himself that was left behind on an alien planet. Picardo saw the episode as a chance to grow the Doctor like never before. Unfortunately, his description of the plot makes it clear that the episode he pitched would have ruined his character altogether.

Is There A Doctor In The House?

“Living Witness” was a Star Trek: Voyager episode where a backup version of the ship’s holographic Doctor is activated on an alien planet seven hundred years after Voyager left. He is activated by a museum curator hoping to get to the bottom of a centuries-old conflict between two alien races. Eventually, the Doctor is able to make peace between the two groups and stays behind as their surgical chancellor before getting into a shuttle and very belatedly plotting a course back to Earth.

To many fans’ surprise, the first season of Starfleet Academy never followed up on “Living Witness.” However, Robert Picardo recently appeared on the D-Con Chamber Podcast (hosted by Enterprise alumni Dominic Keating and Connor Trineer) and revealed that he pitched a Season 3 story that would follow up on this iconic Voyager episode. “I wanted to do an episode—now we can talk freely about it, because the show’s canceled…I wanted to meet my Voyager backup, my old self, and be as I looked at 41 and play off my self.”

Doctor, Heal Thyself

At first, this would have the “Living Witness” Doctor chastising the Starfleet Academy version for programming aging into his subroutine. Eventually, they bond over the relationship they share with Lewis Zimmerman, the man who invented the Emergency Medical Hologram. “The Doctor and his backup program are two children of the same parent. One has resolved the issues, the other hasn’t, and after 800 years, those daddy issues, those parental conflicts, they don’t go away if you don’t deal with them,” Picardo said.

On paper, I love the idea of following up on “Living Witness,” and I previously wrote about how interesting it would be if the backup version was actually the Doctor in Starfleet Academy. Furthermore, Robert Picardo’s storytelling instincts are good in the sense that it would be fun to see multiple versions of this cranky hologram bouncing off each other. Unfortunately, the Starfleet Academy episode that he pitched was emblematic of the show’s biggest problem: that the adults on the show are no more mature than the young cadets.

Nearly Ruining A Beloved Character

Critics of Starfleet Academy have frequently dunked on the cadet characters for various reasons, including their vulgar language, constant insults, and frequent infighting. Fans of the show have traditionally responded to this criticism by pointing out that, as young characters growing up in a post-Burn galaxy, the cadets should be immature. 

However, one of the show’s biggest problems is that the adult characters were equally immature. The Doctor and Captain Ake have a combined 1200 years between them, but they spend their screentime making poop jokes and laughing at a farting fish. Plus, their dialogue is equally vulgar, with the Doctor infamously declaring that “debate is not for the chickensh*t” and Captain Ake telling her enemy to “blow it out your *ss!”

What does this have to do with the Season 3 SFA episode that Robert Picardo pitched? Simple: the last thing the show needs is another older character acting just as immature as the younger characters. For example, having daddy issues is part of Genesis’s character, which makes sense because she is supposed to be so young. But both versions of the Doctor are now over 800 years old, making them some of the wisest and most ancient living beings in the galaxy. Why in the name of Neelix’s stinky cheese would either of them have the same kind of daddy issues as a teenager in her freshman year of space college?

Meet The Trauma Teacher

It was already weird enough in Season 1 that Starfleet Academy turned the Doctor into a tragic figure haunted by the death of his holographic son from “Real Life;”; before this, he never even mentioned the kid after the episode. Now, Picardo’s pitch would further tweak his character to explain that, after the better part of a millennium, the backup Doctor is suffering from daddy issues that, like him mourning his son, were never really mentioned before in Voyager. I can’t help but think this would ultimately ruin his character, turning the whimsical comic relief character from a beloved Star Trek show into just another NuTrek character defined primarily by trauma.

Because of this, I’m glad that Starfleet Academy got canceled. I actually warmed up to Season 1 over time, but it had an insanely rocky first half that made it really hard to love these characters. If Season 3 was going to ruin the Doctor (one of my favorite characters from the Golden Age of the franchise) with Picardo’s pitch, it’s best that the show died. Fans will have to make peace with the fact that the best days of the Doctor are just like the best days of Star Trek: stuck a few decades in the past.

By Brian Myers
| Updated 8 seconds ago

Director and screenwriter Bob Clark did such a masterful job with the 1983 movie A Christmas Story that it’s hard to imagine the man creating anything that wasn’t wholesome. But two years before little Ralphie gets his Red Ryder gun, Clark wrote and directed a comedy so lewd and outrageous that modern audiences are still shocked by it. 1981’s Porky’s was one of the raunchiest comedy movies ever released by a major studio and served as an important milestone in shock comedy.

A Filthy, Iconic Revenge Arc

The story arc of Clark’s semi-autobiographical movie follows a group of high school basketball players who live in Angel Beach, FL in the 1950s. Their hormones raging, they conceive a plan to lose their virginities to an older sex worker, not realizing that they are being set up for a humiliating (and pretty darn funny) prank set up by one of their older brothers.

Determined to follow through with the plan of getting their first times out of the way, the boys believe that their dreams can be fulfilled at a strip club located deep in the Everglades. The seedy establishment is the film’s namesake, owned and operated by an older, hefty character named Porky Wallace. The team makes their way to the strip club, makes an arrangement with Porky for a handful of ladies, and are guided to a darkened room to await their fates.

Unfortunately, it’s a trap. A literal one. Porky pulls a lever from the outside the room the boys are waiting in, springing open a hatch in the floor. The boys plummet down and into the swamp water below.

Enraged, the team storms back in to get their money back and to take a crack at the source of their collective humiliation. Outnumbered and outwitted, they decide to leave while they are still in one piece. They make the long drive back to Angel Beach, still virgins.

The remainder of the film’s primary plotline involves subsequent attempts at revenge on Porky Wallace by one of the group, who only gets severely beaten. Finally, with the help of one of their older brothers (a local policeman), the boys hatch an elaborate vengeance plot that they hope will ruin Porky forever.

But Wait, There’s Sidequests!

The film’s main story is compelling enough. The initial visit to the strip club is equal parts funny and cringy, and the final 20 minutes showcase one of the greatest revenge ideas ever. But it’s all of the side stories that spring up along the way that really make Porky’s a raunchy comedy well worth the time. One subplot involves the new gym coach wondering why one of the younger girls’ coaches (played by Kim Cattrall) has the nickname “Lassie.” No spoilers, but it has nothing to do with her love of collies.

Another sub-plot concerns several of the basketball players discovering that there are ways to view the girls while they shower after practice. Tommy Turner, Pee Wee Morris, and Billy McCarty try and fail several times, mistiming when the girls would be there. But one time, they get lucky and then get caught. No spoilers here, either, but an unnamed appendage of Tommy Turners accidentally winds up in the hands of a woman that the girls call “Kong,” the cranky old Coach Ballbricker.

Porky’s is a mashup of sophomoric pranks, full frontal nudity, hilarious sex scenes, and satisfying revenge. The Movie somehow manages to capture the nostalgic feeling of the 1950s, making the Angel Beach high school and its student body part of Rockwell illustration that is then caked in phallic jokes and bare-breasted women. If Happy Days and late 70s soft-core pornography gave birth to a film that was narrated by a group of 17-year-old boys, the finished product wouldn’t be that far from the film written and directed by Clark.

Porky’s went where no other major release had gone before. Multiple scenes of full-frontal nudity, lewd discussions about quests to lose virginities, and one character’s hilarious obsession with the size of his manhood (he measures it every morning and actually keeps a “growth chart” and pencil next to his bed) paved the way for even raunchier comedy movies throughout the remainder of the 80s and forward. Where Animal House didn’t dare to go, Porky’s said “hold my beer” and delivered shock, awe, and tear-jerking laughter. To be sure, without Porky’s, there would be no Revenge of the Nerds or American Pie.

From Progressive To Perverse

Clark would go on to direct the first sequel, Porky’s II: The Next Day two years later, the same year that he directed the timeless Christmas movie that so many people watch each holiday season. This was certainly the filmmaker’s peak, as the entries later in his career included the bombs Loose Cannons, Turk 182, and Rhinestone.

In case you thought that Porky’s might be an aberration in Clark’s career as a family-friendly filmmaker, guess again. The New Orleans native began making exploitation movies in the late 1960s, beginning with the cult classic She-Man. The plot centers around a former GI that discovers that he enjoys wearing women’s clothing, giving audiences a look at the trans community.

Clark followed that work up with a documentary titled Queens at Heart in 1967. This piece centered around the lives of four transwomen, each of whom dresses to match their genders assigned at birth by day but live as women after work. Both of these early films by Clark are considered ground-breaking, given that they provide a candid and honest glimpse into the lives of a community that was scarcely represented during that era.

From there, Clark shifted his focus to horror. His first genre film was the gruesome zombie movie Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (1972). Shot with a budget of $50,000, the cult classic was the result of Clark’s tireless diligence and the participation of a group of the director’s friends from college. It helped to cement his reputation as one of the best B-horror filmmakers of the decade and quickly became a late-night drive-in favorite.

In 1974, Clark directed two additional horror films. The first, Death Dream, was a reimagining of the W. W. Jacobs tale “The Monkey’s Paw.” Though a low-budget feature, it starred future multi-Emmy Award nominee Richard Backus (One Life to Live, Ryan’s Hope), as well as Academy Award nominee Lynn Carlin (Faces). Horror fans will recognize the special effects makeup work of master artist Tom Savini, who would soon go on to work with George Romero.

The second horror entry that year was, ironically enough, Clark’s first Christmas movie. Black Christmas is regarded by many as the first slasher film and has been remade twice (2006 and 2019). The original stars future Superman and Amityville Horror actress Margot Kidder, Olivia Hussey, and John Saxon.

Bob Clark’s Legendary Run

Rounding out the decade for Clark was a leap to yet another genre of film. In 1976, he filmed Breaking Point, a low-budget crime drama starring Bo Svenson and Robert Culp. Three years later he brought to life Sherlock Holmes and Watson in the mystery thriller Murder by Decree. The plot follows the British duo as they track the Whitechapel killings committed by the notorious Jack the Ripper. It was his biggest budget film by far at that point, and boasted a cast consisting of James Mason (Salem’s Lot, Lolita), Christopher Plummer (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country), and Donald Sutherland (Invasion of the Body Snatchers).

So, the next time you and your family gather around the TV with the family and begin quoting along with Ralphie and the bunch, remember that the brain behind it was also the same fellow who orchestrated an on-screen tug-of-war between Coach Ballbricker and that rascal Tommy Turner, using the latter’s genitalia as sports equipment.

As of this writing, Porky’s is currently unavailable for Streaming.