Tax Software Sends Info To Meta (Facebook)

[Solitaire]

Tax Filing Websites Send User's Financial Information To Facebook

Major tax filing services such as H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer have
been quietly transmitting sensitive financial information to Facebook when
Americans file their taxes online, The Markup has learned.

The data, sent through widely used code called the Meta Pixel, includes
not only information like names and email addresses but often even more
detailed information, including data on users’ income, filing status, refund
amounts, and dependents’ college scholarship amounts.

The information sent to Facebook can be used by the company to power
its advertising algorithms and is gathered regardless of whether the person
using the tax filing service has an account on Facebook or other platforms
operated by its owner Meta.

Each year, the Internal Revenue Service processes about 150 million
individual returns filed electronically, and some of the most widely used
e-filing services employ the pixel, The Markup found.

About as secure as the back of a pickup on the wrong side of the tracks
in an unlit area of the town overnight.

 

[Trebuchet]

Privacy is dead, and has been for some time.

 

[Checkmite]

About as secure as the back of a pickup on the wrong side of the tracks
in an unlit area of the town overnight.

It is worth pointing out that commercial tax preparation companies managed to lobby the Federal government to prevent the IRS from offering free online tax-filing directly, forcing them to create only a backend for which the for-profit tax-prep companies themselves serve as the only front-facing public gateways. Predictably, these companies have been found to be taking advantage their gateway status, using ambiguous or misleading site design to redirect taxpayers seeking out the free-filing options to those companies' paid services instead.

 

[Darat]

About as secure as the back of a pickup on the wrong side of the tracks
in an unlit area of the town overnight.

I'm sure it was in the terms and conditions....