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Well crap. Time to file my taxes for this year and cancel my account. This is the reason I won't sign up for any new startup ever - it seems that eventually th
by scrooched_moose 7y ago
Well crap. Time to file my taxes for this year and cancel my account.
This is the reason I won't sign up for any new startup ever - it seems that eventually they all get acquired by one of the old guard behemoths anyway.
No matter how virtuous and privacy focused they are, that all gets destroyed when someone buys them.
- propogandist 7y agoCreditKarma was far from privacy focused, their T&C + Privacy policy gave them lots of grounds to mine and sell user data. Personal income information about users is generally 3rd party estimates for ads/marketing industry, but by offering a free Tax service, CK was able gather information on actual income about users, which is extremely valuable data. This would be very lucrative for data-brokers or sold as targetable and proprietary 'audience data', which can be combined with other data-sources to support marketing activities.
- scrooched_moose 7y agoThey may not have been perfect (and I was aware of their policy), but there's no scenario I can see where Intuit won't be dramatically worse.
- perplex 7y agoI use hrblock online for taxes and at least there you can opt out of information mining.
- scarface74 7y agoThe whole idea that companies like Facebook, Google or Credit Karma “sell user data” is a misnomer. Companies don’t sell user data, they sell access to you based on the data they have. The distinction is important. They don’t give third parties a list of users that meet a certain criteria, companies tell them that they want to advertise to users who meet a certain criteria. User data is far too important to sell.