Information income status, emails, and more collected due to Meta Pixel being implemented into the tax prep services.
Several tax prep services have been found sending sensitive financial information to Meta, including people’s income, filing status, and even amounts won in college scholarships.
The information comes via an investigative report from The Markup (opens in new tab), which claims that Meta Pixel implementation in tax filing services has led to unintended data collection on Meta’s part.
Meta Pixel (opens in new tab) is a piece of Javascript code created by Meta that lets companies track user activity as a way to “measure the effectiveness of [ads and the design]” of their websites. As it turns out, way more information than user activity was being sent, and all without user consent. Names of filers, dependents, email addresses, and in some cases, phone numbers were among the leaked financial data. And it doesn’t matter if those users didn’t have an account on any Meta-owned platform. Meta can still use this data to bolster its own advertising algorithm, according to the report.
Google was also implicated in the report, but that situation appears less dire. A Google spokesperson states the data collected is all jumbled and can’t be tied to a specific person.
