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Tax preparers that shared private data with Meta, Google could be fined billions
- throw9away6 3y agoNobody will go to jail. Fine will be way less than profits. Everything will work out for them. Maybe some low level employees will get fired.
- ChatGTP 3y agoBillions is a joke when they're paid trillions. These companies are out of control
- robertlagrant 3y agoWhich ones are paid trillions?
- cscurmudgeon 3y agoI mean the TikTok CEO under oath lied no US data is saved in China, meanwhile https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandralevine/2023/06/21/tiktok-confirms-data-china-bytedance-security-cfius/?sh=4315d90c3270 https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandralevine/2023/06/21/tikt...
- throw9away6 3y agoYeah but you can’t send him to jail he’s basically a foreign diplomat
- thumbuddy 3y agoWhy would we send him to jail anyways? Google, Facebook, and thousands of other companies are doing the exact same thing right now. Jesse some guy tried to overthrow the US government and he isn't in jail. Once you get enough $ meaningful punishment is mostly out of the question here...
- jraby3 3y agoI don’t think Facebook or google has lied to the US government about sending US citizen data to China.
- solveit 3y ago>Jesse some guy tried to overthrow the US government and he isn't in jail. Once you get enough $ meaningful punishment is mostly out of the question here... If you're talking about Trump, he's possibly the worst example you could pick for your case, as his treatment has nothing to do with his wealth and everything to do with the fact that he is the previous President...
- thumbuddy 3y agoI respect your opinion. But personally feel that his wealth and varied enterprises are exactly how he became president in the first place. The inordinate amount of lies, and propaganda that composed his campaign were treated as valid points of view despite being objectively wrong because there is a culture of wealth worshipping in the US. "If I give the rich guy my vote he will make me prosperous too!" Or "he is wealthy because God has blessed him"(a surprisingly common well documented evangelical belief). But if ya disagree with that, that's fine. Can take a quick Google search and find hundreds of instances were wealthy people committed serious crimes and received no substantial punishment for doing so compared to their less influential counterparts. I could list some, but I trust you can do that for yourself.
- ThunderSizzle 3y agoYeah, that guy is currently sitting pretty in the white house. The machine he works for rigged the election, on multiple levels, and started a proxy war over what appears to a place of great interest of corrupt politicians. Got to protect The Big Guy's 10% cut.
- piva00 3y ago> Yeah, that guy is currently sitting pretty in the white house. > and started a proxy war over what appears to a place of great interest of corrupt politicians Putin does not sit in the White House in Moscow, that's where Russia's Prime Minister sits :)
- midoridensha 3y agoForeign CEOs are not diplomats. They can be jailed just like anyone else, assuming they enter your sovereign territory.
- klyrs 3y agoWhen Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada, it caused a diplomatic crisis. While you're right de jure, the situation is quite different de facto.
- mcpackieh 3y ago> basically If he doesn't actually have diplomatic papers, then he's fair game. And if he does, he can still be kicked out of the country at the very least.
- throw9away6 3y agoYou can also arrest a diplomat but either way you cause an international crisis
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- roadbuster 3y ago> Fine will be way less than profits What profits were derived from the "sharing" of "millions of taxpayers' data?" I had to do a technical audit of this issue to find out if my company had also been placed at risk. What happened is this: 1. Facebook asks advertisers to place some javascript on their website to help with general measurements (i.e.: whether viewing an ad on a Facebook property ultimately led to a purchase) 2. This javascript may also gather user interactions on the website so an advertiser can see what users engage with, what might be relevant to ad performance measurement, etc 3. These stupid tax prep companies placed the script on pages where users might view, interact with, or submit very private information 4. When users clicked around, tracking data was sent to FB 5. A security/privacy journalist spotted this and said, "gotcha." Ad Tech companies don't want your SSN, and they really don't know to know if you purchased Plan B. But when tax prep sites and online pharmacies place a tracking script on all their webpages, everyone ends up with egg on their face. There were no profits here. The journalist's privacy investigation should be appreciated and celebrated, but Elizabeth Warren is just raising a boogeyman so she can keep sticking a knife into the hearts of these large, corporate entities. Election season is coming up, after all.
- throw9away6 3y agoHa well a nice strong fine then to discourage this stupid behavior of adding tracking scripts from 3rd party fines. I’d still like to see the executive that approved this spend 1 night in jail to prove a point that stupid has personal consequences
- roadbuster 3y ago> a nice strong fine Who receives the fine? * The Tax Prep companies? That would be fair: they are obligated to handle private user data in a responsible manner * The ad tech companies? That would not be fair: they didn't want the data, didn't know it was being sent, and almost assuredly didn't use it for any kind of ad serving, measurement, or optimization.
- Eisenstein 3y ago
- lastofthemojito 3y agoI suspect you're right. But there's still that little part of me hoping that maybe some big fines mixed with lessened revenues if the IRS releases it's own tax-prep software[0] could actually put some of these clowns out of business. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35950836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35950836
- solardev 3y agoDonate some money to some Congress member's reelection fund, promise them a cushy job afterward, it all gets swept under the rug. Bonus if the intelligence agencies can then double dip and reuse that same data for national security. To protect the children from terrorists, of course.
- adeelk93 3y agoIn this conspiracy theory - why wouldn’t the intelligence agencies get tax returns from the IRS directly?
- whatwhaaaaat 3y agoI’m no constitutional lawyer but wouldn’t that be a violation of the 4th amendment whereas (and I don’t exactly know why either) it’s been deemed constitutional for the government to buy data collected by third parties?
- groby_b 3y agoYup. As to the "why" part, the whole thing operates under the legal assumption that if you already shared your data with somebody else (e.g. your bank) you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Essentially, the "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" part of 4A is interpreted literally. Since that third party has your data, you're still secure in your papers and effects, but the bank doesn't have 4A protection. That made some sense when information meant either you had a piece of paper, or you had given it to somebody else. But ever since information is cheaply copied and distributed, it really doesn't work so well. (This is why I believe any literalist interpretation of the constitution is bullshit. It just doesn't translate well over a 200 year distance) It's currently a somewhat debated legal concept - Sotomayor had an opinion that amounted to "maybe we should rethink that" a while ago, and there have been a few cases saying "nope". But nothing's reached SCOTUS so far. (If you want to find out more, "third party doctrine" is the keyword. Or buy a constitutional lawyer a beer, it's fun :)
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- shove 3y ago“Could be” lol if anyone wants to bet it’ll be over $100M hit me up.
- orzig 3y agoGo wild: https://manifold.markets/ https://manifold.markets/
- zadethrowaway1 3y agohttps://manifold.markets/ZadeTesting/will-the-tax-companies-that-shared https://manifold.markets/ZadeTesting/will-the-tax-companies-...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- exabrial 3y agoHow about we fine Google/Facebook trillions for accepting said data?
- freeAgent 3y agoI assume this idea would never be considered as a possibility by most people here (yeah, trillions is hyperbole), but it’s ready the case that firms in the Financial Services industry screen all incoming data over all channels for anything that looks like PII. The only stuff that makes it through with the recipient being unmolested must be approved by compliance and infosec folks. Anyway, this is just to say that refusing to accept unsolicited personal financial information is very much already a thing in industries outside Big Tech.
- danielfoster 3y agoI never see satisfaction in the government collecting big fines. The money really ought to go to the affected consumers.
- technick 3y agoThat would cost too much money
- FounderBurr 3y agoSo there will be millions of man years of jail time directed at the executives ‘responsible’ for giving the go ahead to these deals? Or will they never miss a chef prepared meal in their glass castles, with no chance of ever being held responsible for the great ‘responsibility’ of being in charge?
- technick 3y agoWhile one could only hope the people behind this data leak see's some form of criminal justice, it will likely only be a fine and a sternly worded letter telling these companies to get approval next time. They'll write it into their TOS and the business practice will be continued.
- asynchronous 3y agoWe really, really need to punish this kind of behavior. Lying about the actions and the actions themselves are despicable. This should ruin the careers of the people who made these decisions.
- dmurray 3y agoIt reflects poorly on the justice system that this is true, but it reflects extremely poorly on H&R Block's lawyers that they didn't slip something into the terms and conditions about how "we may from time to time share certain of this information with our commercial partners". Surely they would have lost less than one customer in a thousand.
- helsinkiandrew 3y ago>Lawmakers said that the evidence appears to show that "Meta and Google failed to implement adequate safeguards to prevent the transfer of taxpayers' sensitive personal and financial information, despite their contentions that they did so." The description of the data that was shared is quite vague in the article. But If this is the result of tax prepping companies putting Meta pixels in pages containing personal data so they can show ads (shouldn’t these be only accessible by the user anyway so they can’t be scraped by Meta?), or manually adding personal data to analytics parameters (so they could check time on app by income etc), then I think the fault lies with those companies rather than Meta and Google
- ec109685 3y agoThe headline is confusing. Tax preparers shared with both Google and Meta and the Tax Preparers could be fined billions.
- goldpizza44 3y agoThis is why the IRS should be providing tax prep software directly. They should already have w2s, 1099s etc and should be able to process them directly into the forms. The only reason we have to pay third parties is they bought the politicians.
- crooked-v 3y agoActually, most people in the US shouldn't have to do any tax prep at all. The IRS already has all that information, after all. The only reason the average US worker has to do anything more than a check a "this is correct" box is because a significant number of politicians intentionally want taxes to be annoying and time-consuming in order to bias people against the idea of being taxed at all.
- SoftTalker 3y agoCynically, I think they don't because even they don't understand all their rules. They couldn't write the software even if they wanted to. But yeah, I'd love it if this was the kick in the pants that is needed to get people to see how ridiculous it is that taxpayers need to pay a third party just to submit their information to the IRS.
- tzs 3y agoThey obviously can write the software. We know this because they already written it. We know this because when you e-file if your tax return is one of the ones for which they don't actually need any information you provide and you made a mistake they tell you right then what your mistake is and reject the filing.
- moneywoes 3y agoAnd billion dollar tax prep companies want to have business
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoAnd just to quantify that. Slightly more than 10% of the workforce are self-employed. For that 10%, the IRS has almost none of the relevant information. So "most people" in this context means 90%. I think most of us (even those in the 10%, like I am) would agree that 90% does indeed mean "most".
- bagacrap 3y agoTax prep is absolutely the scariest thing I do online (rivaled only by proving that I am qualified for a mortgage, but luckily that only happens infrequently). The amount of sensitive data you share with a company with minimal tech expertise...
- bqmjjx0kac 3y agoI have used encrypted PDFs in the past, sending the password out of band. I'm sure it annoyed them at the bank, but their tech didn't inspire confidence.
- fsckboy 3y agowhile we're rounding up the suspects here, and deciding what laws to reform, let's remember that meta and google are the madams of this whorehouse, and advertisers are the johns, how about we make sure they are also disincented?
- thegrizzlyking 3y agoAttempting to research if tax prep companies had gained consent to disclose and use data from its users, Congress was blocked by the companies, who refused to "provide current and historical versions of disclosure agreements and privacy policies." Undeterred, Congress consulted Internet archives to access historical versions of company policies and pieced together that none of the companies appeared to have gained consent from their customers to share the sensitive data with Meta and Google. Internet archives to the rescue
- scarab92 3y agoI hate the term “data”. What data did they share, and why did Google or Meta want this data? Are we only talking Google Analytics or are we talking about for profit data brokering.
- GoblinSlayer 3y agoFor profit ad platforms, for example knowing taxes, you can sort people by their income.
- adampk 3y ago"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." Seems that they provided the data to get Meta to target customers for them.
- juanani 3y ago[dead]
- whyenot 3y agoThis sort of thing should be the civil equivalent of a capital crime. If the companies are found guilty, their entire assets should be seized and they should cease to function. It should also be easier to pierce the corporate veil.
- jimnotgym 3y agoIs it illegal to receive this information, or just to give it?
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y ago'could' be fined billions. What will they actually be fined? History would suggest very f'ing little if anything.
- joker_minmax 3y agoI know it doesn't amount to anything, but attempting to spank a company this way is the only time I really get happy about what the government did today, so I hope this time it actually changes something. But I don't think the tax prep firms should be the only ones punished here. What about the tech companies who took the data?
- penguin_booze 3y agoFines on corporations should be large enough to burn and have their eyes water, not to tickle and leave them giggling. Additionally, executive pay and bonus should be cut/confiscated proportianately--this ought to be subtantial enough to make a dent in their net take-home pay. A compentent authority should verify this from their tax return of the following year. Ultimately, it's the decision makers that must pay, not the janitors and cleaners.