Thousands of NZ Taxpayers’ Details Handed to Social Media Platforms, Tax Office Admits

Inland Revenue says the data it’s handing over is anonymised, but experts say the protection is too weak to be effective.

A photo taken on Oct. 21, 2020, shows the logos of Google (center), the American online social media and social networking service, Facebook (Top R), Snapchat (Bottom R), Twitter (top L) and Instragram (bottom L) on a computer screen. Denis Charlet/AFP via Getty Images

New Zealand’s Inland Revenue Department (IRD)—which holds the personal details of millions of New Zealanders, even children who hold after-school jobs—has been giving personal information to social media platforms in a format it insists is safe but which experts say is not.

Data on hundreds of thousands of people have been given to the platforms to enable the targeting of IRD’s marketing campaigns.