Several prominent online tax filing websites have reportedly been sending Americans’ private financial information to Facebook, even in cases where users did not have an account on the platform, according to a jointly published report by The Verge and nonprofit the Markup.
The companies, which included H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer, utilized a code snippet called the “Meta Pixel,” a tool used by Facebook and parent-company Meta to gather data on users and improve their advertising algorithms, according to the Markup. Information included income, filing status, value of dependents’ college scholarships, health savings account information, and a variety of personally identifiable information….