Meta has been sued for allegedly infringing 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 data, and amounts. pay back to Meta.
This would then have been used by the tech giant to produce tailored, targeted ads based on the data on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
The lawsuit, which was filed on December 1, concerns users using H&R Block.
The Submit (opens in new tab) claims that even though users “expressly refused” to share their data with Meta, the company collected them anyway.
While acknowledging that Meta demanded that companies have a “legal right to collect, use and share data from users,” the lawsuit went on to allege that this was not honored, instead relying “on a broken honor system that has resulted in repeated, documented violations of Meta’s own contractual promises and state and federal law”.
Despite the alleged misconduct on the part of the tech giant, current users of the aforementioned pieces of tax software have nothing to worry about.
According to The layout (opens in new tab), all of the aforementioned tax platforms have already completely removed Pixel or changed the setting not to collect additional financial information from users.
It is important to note that the tax authorities themselves were not listed as defendants in the filing, placing any alleged misconduct on the part of Meta.
Meta is certainly no stranger to legal disputes.
The company was hit with a fine of €265 million for data protection from the Irish Data Protection Commission over allegations that the company failed to protect the personal data of half a billion users, bringing the total amount of EU fines to date to more than €1 billion.
- Do you want to be sure that your data does not fall into the wrong hands? Check out our guide to the best privacy tools.