A group of anonymous plaintiffs who filed their taxes online in 2020 using H&R Block has sued MetaThey accused the company of violating users’ trust and privacy. Recall, the company was recently accused of violating users’ trust and privacy. Markup investigation revealed that H&R Block, along with other popular tax-filing websites like TaxAct and TaxSlayer, have been sending users’ sensitive financial information to Meta through its Pixel tracking tool.
Pixel is a small piece of code that can be embedded on companies’ websites. It allows them to track visitor activities and identify Instagram and Facebook users for ads. The code was used to transmit personal information to Meta by the tax prep websites. This included income data, refund amounts, dependent tuition grants and filing statuses. Tax-filing services had changed their Pixel settings in order to stop sending information. They also had been reevaluating the way they used Pixel at that time. Markup’sReport was published.
In a statement sent EngadgetMeta stated that advertisers cannot share personal information with advertisers and that it has an automated system that can filter sensitive content through Pixel. In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs acknowledged that they had received Meta’s personal information. Reported(PDF, courtesy The MarkupMeta requires that Pixel-using businesses have the legal rights to use, collect and share user data. The plaintiffs claim that Meta does not enforce this rule, but instead relies upon a “broken honour-system” which has led to “repeated, documented violations.”
According to The MarkupThe lawsuit seeks class action status for those who used the tax preparation services mentioned in the report. However, the services were not named as defendants.
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