A congressional investigation led by Senator Elizabeth Warren finds popular tax filing tools “recklessly” sent data, like income, to Meta and Google for years
https://www.cnn.com/... Mastodon: Paul Cantrell / @inthehands@hachyderm.io : Just beating my old drum: — The fines involved could tip some of these companies into bankruptcy. — That's good. — Corporations will behave very differently depending on whether they believe a sufficiently large privacy or security breach could be a company-ending event. — https://arstechnica.com/... @jerry@infosec.exchange : It's come to my attention that social media sites are supposed to be collecting tax filing information from tax preparers for its users. I regret to inform you that Infosec.exchange has been negligent in this area and I would like to sincerely apologize to all that I may have offended by failing to collect this information like real social media sites are supposed to. … Twitter: Brian Fung / @b_fung : NEW: A seven-month congressional probe finds tax-prep companies spent years sharing taxpayer data with Meta and Google in potential violation of federal law — data that in some cases was misused for targeted ads: https://www.cnn.com/... Brian Fung / @b_fung : Legal experts are calling it a “five-alarm fire” for taxpayer privacy. https://www.cnn.com/... [image] Elizabeth Warren / @senwarren : Today I released a new 54-page report revealing that Big Tax Prep companies have recklessly shared personal and financial data of millions of taxpayers with Big Tech for years. Regulators need to fully investigate and prosecute those who violated the law. https://themarkup.org/... Sisi Wei / @sisiwei : Incredible impact from our investigation into tax websites in December, and this moves the needle forward another step when it comes to holding companies accountable for how they use marketing pixels. https://twitter.com/... Shane / @shaneferro : Maybe Congress should finally allow the IRS to just tell people what they owe and stop requiring most Americans to unnecessarily pay $60 a year to a middleman in the first place https://twitter.com/... Parker / @pt : There's a reason in dystopian movies about future, where corporations control everything, there evil plot is never to target the populace with better ads. It's crazy so many people make a living trying to stop this. Imagine if they did something useful, like rescuing puppies. https://twitter.com/... Justin Hendrix / @justinhendrix : “The report highlights what legal experts described to CNN as a ‘five-alarm fire’ for taxpayer privacy that could lead to government and private lawsuits, criminal penalties or perhaps even a ‘mortal blow’ for some industry giants involved in the probe...” https://twitter.com/... Emily Gorcenski / @emilygorcenski : This is a trash sandwich. Horrible tax prep companies and horrible surveillance capitalists coming together to abuse Americans' privacy for profit https://cnn.com/... Matt Egan / @mattegancnn : “On a scale from one to 10, this is a 15,” Georgetown's David Vladeck tells @b_fung. Congressional probe finds that tax prep companies shared taxpayer data with Meta, Google and other tech firms for years in potential violation of federal law. https://www.cnn.com/... Brian Fung / @b_fung : For years, anyone who did their taxes on TaxAct, TaxSlayer and H&R Block's websites were having their data collected by “tracking pixels” — bits of code that are common on the web but here ended up gathering sensitive financial data, the report said. https://www.cnn.com/... Forums: Hacker News : Tax prep firms shared ‘extraordinarily sensitive’ data about taxpayers with Meta r/politics : Democrats call on DOJ to investigate tax sites for sharing financial information with Meta | TaxSlayer, H&R Block, and TaxAct embedded Meta's pixel onto their tax filing sites r/privacy : Congressional Report Finds Meta and Tax Prep Companies “Recklessly” Shared Taxpayers' Data r/privacy : Tax prep companies shared private taxpayer data with Google and Meta for years, congressional probe finds