Facebook Leak Just One Reason Taxpayer Data Sharing Must Stop

Recently, the Markup discovered that various tax filing websites, including TaxAct, TaxSlayer, and H&R Block, were sending user financial information to Facebook, which is owned by Meta Platforms. The leak occurred through the filing websites’ use of a piece of code called Meta Pixel. It is a snippet of JavaScript code that collects information about a visitor and transfers it to Meta, ostensibly to provide analytic data back to the website owner. Generally, it’s limited to things such as a visitor’s geographic location and time spent on the page. But optional payloads can also be attached, and it seems ...