Several anonymous plaintiffs have filed legal claims against Meta after they filed their taxes online using H&R Block in 2020. They allege that the company has violated their privacy and trust. H&R Block, among other tax-filing websites such as TaxAct and TaxSlayer, had been utilizing Meta's Pixel tracking system to collect sensitive financial information from users through web forms on their websites. In a recent Markup investigation, it was also revealed that Meta was storing users' sensitive financial information.
Using Pixel, a company can track visitors' activities on its websites. This allows them to target ads to Facebook and Instagram users that they would like to advertise to. According to the investigation, the tax preparation websites mentioned above apparently transmitted confidential data such as income, filing statuses, refund amounts, and dependents' tuition grants to Meta by using that code.
In Markup's report, it was revealed that many of the tax-filing services had already changed their Pixel settings so that they would stop sending information or were re-evaluating how they used Pixel before Markup's investigation.
When the news of the data breaches first broke, Meta sent a statement to Engadget. This statement stated that advertiser is not allowed to share private information with third parties. According to the company, it is dependent on an automated system that is capable of filtering out sensitive content sent via Pixel. There is no dispute that Meta requires businesses that use Pixel to have a lawful right to collect, use, and share user data to exchange information with them in their complaint (PDF, courtesy of The Markup) before they can provide the company with any information about their users. Despite this, the plaintiffs contend that Meta does not make any efforts to enforce that rule and is relying on a "broken honor system," which has led to repeated violations of this rule.
According to Marshal Hoda, a member of the legal team that will be representing the plaintiffs in their case. Users' sensitive financial information was passed on by Meta without their consent. In addition, Meta failed to protect the privacy of its users. As Hoda pointed out, there are some sacred kinds of information.
The Markup reports that the lawsuit seeks to establish class-action status for people who used the tax preparation services detailed in the publication's report. It also seeks compensation for those people. In this case, however, the services were not named defendants in the lawsuit.
