They didn't share financial information, they used meta and google analytics on their sites, which can leak financial information by showing what page the user was on (e.g. pages specific to certain deductions or benefits.) Most people here in the comments clearly didn't read the article.<p>It's not like meta was buying up people's tax returns. Just negligence on the part of these tax sites.
Yet it's impossible for me see my own prior tax returns from a product I already paid for. I can't contact support for help without paying additional money to turbotax.<p>I realize this article doesn't match turbotax specifically but the entire industry is rotten to the core and shouldn't exist in the first place.
Related:<p><i>Tax-filing websites have been sending users financial info to Meta</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33753058">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33753058</a> - Nov 2022 (20 comments)<p><i>Tax filing websites have been sending users’ financial information to Facebook</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33705532">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33705532</a> - Nov 2022 (74 comments)
I would be curious to know what data they're sharing exactly.<p>Are they actually sharing any financial information, or are they just passing a counter back to Meta saying that person X filled out a form/visited a page.<p>Not to say any tracking is 'good' but this might not be quite so obviously bad.
There should be only one tax site, it should be operated by the IRS, and, as US citizens, we should not be required to disclose our financial information to any private company in order to efficiently file our taxes.
Use your brain on this stuff. Think about how many billions of requests are being sent from pixels every day. Facebook is not looking through hundreds of millions of unique URLs and form data to find some obscure user data that their Ad systems aren't trained for.<p>And just look at the docs if you want to find out what pixel exactly does: it doesn't collect form data unless the developer explicitly specifies it.<p><a href="https://developers.facebook.com/docs/meta-pixel/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://developers.facebook.com/docs/meta-pixel/</a>
I don't like the word "share" in this context: these financial companies didn't simply give away info, they got something in return and I would like more info about what they got.
Pixel, Google tag manager and Bluekai (?, that one from Oracle) are in a lot of sites and mobile apps.<p>I’m happy to see this getting visibility around a privacy use case that’ll reach normal folks and politicians more clearly.<p>I’m also happy to see the “this is bad” comments far outnumbering the “well why is this Metoogle’s fault” comments that many (properly RSU’d incentivized) engineers always seem to fall back on to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the social impacts of the products they build and personally profit from.
This is the sort of thing why you <i>really</i> want to block 3rd party JS. There are plenty of JS blockers out there, get one and very selectively enable the stuff that you need.
I keep reading these articles. They say that tax sites "shared" or "gave" user data via active pixels, but is that really true?<p>Don't these companies receive money to host the pixels?<p>Didn't these companies actually sell user data?<p>"Giving" and "sharing" are not the same as "selling", yet not one article I've read indicated whether the tax prep compaies received payment for the user data.<p>Does anyone know?
freetaxusa.com doesn't seem to be doing this based on their privacy policy here:<p><a href="https://www.freetaxusa.com/privacy" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.freetaxusa.com/privacy</a><p>But they are not one of the majors.
Wait, why would Meta & Google even want your tax data??<p>Peeking at your credit cards purchase historic I can understand, as it tells them your shopping habits and helps them target you better. But tax data?? Why??
This is one more reason why we need to move to a single-tax system. No tax on labor, because we want more labor and you should keep what you make. No tax on capital, because we want more investment so that labor is more effective.<p>Tax land. Land is not capital nor is it labor. Land ownership only allows rent-seeking behavoir. Land ownership is an artificial right granted by the government.<p>Google "single tax movement" to learn more. Or try this:<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism</a>
This should be the reason why these sites should no longer exist. The IRS should have this as a built-in service. Or better yet, return-free filing like most other large economy countries.