It's not like meta was buying up people's tax returns. Just negligence on the part of these tax sites.
And meta and google analytics means there is data exchange, why do they want to do any "analytics" on people's personal data? Remove any and all analytics on tax websites.
Why are you straight up attacking the people by saying "Most people here in the comments clearly didn't read the article". They clearly did, understand and have full right to ask questions.
> Why are you straight up attacking the people by saying "Most people here in the comments clearly didn't read the article". They clearly did, understand and have full right to ask questions.
At the time I wrote this comment, most people had clearly not read the article. Currently it still seems like a huge number of people still haven't since they're talking about things like the sale of tax information to meta, or why meta would want your tax information. There was no sale, meta likely didn't even know they had this information. It was just negligence. That's not attacking people, it's calling a spade a spade, which I will do without trepidation or remorse.
Maybe, maybe not. I think it merits investigation. Even if this was accidental I think it is still criminal negligence and should be prosecuted.
This doesn't matter. If I did the same with your medical records HIPAA wouldn't give two shits. I improperly secured data, end of story. Even then you're depending on Meta telling us the truth (Of course I didn't look at that data, signed Mark). And even then you're depending on that data remaining secure and not getting piped off somewhere else.
Really ought to remove Corporate Analytic Software from all sites.
Is there an open-source alternative to handing over your entire site and all your users to the Big Two?
That data came to Meta through its Pixel code, which the tax firms installed on their websites to gather information on how to improve their own marketing campaigns. In exchange, Meta was able to access the data to write targeted algorithms for its own users.
https://apnews.com/article/irs-taxpayer-tax-preparation-meta...
Looks like very much more than "just negligence". Looks like deliberate private data usage without the consent of the people involved.
Meta and the rest are at fault for using the data they gather from these analytics for their own purposes.
This is not a new problem, and is why I block analytics scripts and data connections to Meta/Google/etc.
I agree, but that's not something that's going to happen. What do site operators care? They aren't the ones paying the price.
So the practical result is that we have to protect ourselves from the web sites. I do this by blocking domains that belong to analytics providers, and don't allow most Javascript to execute in my browser.