Several prominent online tax filing websites have reportedly been sending Americans’ private financial information to Facebook, even in cases where users did not have an account on the platform, according to a jointly published report by The Verge and nonprofit the Markup.
“At H&R Block, we take protecting our clients’ privacy very seriously, and we are taking steps to mitigate the sharing of client information via pixels,” the company told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement. The company’s website was still sending health savings account information and information on dependents’ college tuition grants via pixels as of Nov. 21, according to the Markup.
H&R Block did not immediately respond to a question asking it to confirm the Markup’s reporting, or a question about the extent to which users are notified of this data being gathered.
Meta says it doesn’t want sensitive financial information, like income, sent to it. But that’s exactly what two tax sites sent.
When we took our findings to Facebook, the company said that its system “is designed to filter out potentially sensitive data it is able to detect.” pic.twitter.com/CT5X28CpIn
“Advertisers should not send sensitive information about people through our Business Tools,” Meta said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Doing so is against our policies and we educate advertisers on properly setting up Business tools to prevent this from occurring. Our system is designed to filter out potentially sensitive data it is able to detect.”
The DCNF asked Meta about how the filter works and how the company might account for mistakes made by the filter, but did not receive an immediate reply.
The tax preparation industry now makes more than $11 billion per year in the United States, according to the Markup.
“It’s frustrating because taxpayers have been pushed into the arms of these private, for-profit companies simply to comply with their tax filing obligations,” Mandi Matlock, a Harvard Law School tax lecturer told the Markup. “We have no choice, really, in the matter.”
TaxAct, the IRS, and TaxSlayer did not immediately respond to a Daily Caller News Foundation request for comment.