Meta has been sued for allegedly violating users’ right to privacy by collecting data from users of popular third-party tax software.
The filing relates to recent allegations that online tax software tools such as H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer used the company’s “Meta Pixel,” a piece of JavaScript code, to send information such as names, email addresses, income information, student loan statements, and refunds to Meta.
This could have been used by the tech giant to produce personalized and targeted ads based on data on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
The lawsuit, which was filed Dec. 1, concerns users using H&R Block.
filing (Opens in a new tab) Claims that although users “explicitly refused” to share their data with Meta, the company collected it anyway.
Although the plaintiff’s filing acknowledged that Meta required companies to have a “legal right to collect, use, and share” users’ data, it continued to claim that it did not respect that, instead relying on a “broken honor system that had led to Repeated and documented violations of Meta contractual promises and state and federal law.”
Despite alleged misconduct on the part of the tech giant, existing users of the aforementioned tax software shouldn’t have anything to worry about at all.
according to coding (Opens in a new tab)And the All of the above tax platforms have either removed the Pixel entirely or changed their settings so that no additional financial information is collected from users.
It’s important to note that the tax services themselves were not listed as defendants in the filing, putting all alleged wrongdoing on Meta’s part.
Meta is certainly no stranger to legal disputes.
The company has been hit with a €265m data protection fine from the Irish Data Protection Commission over allegations that the company failed to protect the personal data of half a billion users, taking the EU’s total fines to date to more than €1bn.
- Want to make sure your data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands? Check out our guide to the best privacy tools.
