USA - Taxpayer Info Sold to Facebook and Google
About 10 million people type their personal financial information into H&R Block, TaxSlayer and TaxAct websites every year to prepare their taxes, trusting the companies to keep their information safe. Instead, the companies shared that personal information with Google and Facebook, some going as far back as 2011, members of Congress wrote in a new report.
The congressional investigation, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), follows a report last year about such data-sharing with Facebook by the technology journalism website The Markup. Warren and six other lawmakers wrote to the Justice Department urging criminal charges against the tax companies for violating laws that prevent tax preparers from sharing their clients’ personal information.
The three companies tracked the information that users typed into their tax preparation websites using pixels, a common technology utilized on almost all websites for customer ad targeting on social media. Google and Meta, Facebook’s parent company, offer this tracking technology to website administrators. When users typed their information into the tax forms, the report says, pixel technology sent that data to Google and Facebook—including users’ approximate annual gross income, the amount of money they received as a tax refund, whether they are married and have children, and whether they ever clicked on a long list of tax forms that would reveal more about their income and life events.
-www.msn.com, 12 July 2023
Arno's Commentary
What needs to be added is that all governmental or NGO watchdogs are dealing with things unknown heretofore. Thus, the assumption that we can avoid being exposed or keep our privacy is no more than a pipe dream. Everything is recorded and stored indefinitely; thus, available for disclosure. In most cases, it is to the people’s advantage, but ultimately, it will be misused.
In the meantime, “we are not ignorant of his [Satan’s] devices” (2 Corinthians 2:11b). What is his plan? To mimic the ultimate judgment: “And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works” (Revelation 20:12). There will be no coverup. All will be revealed.
Arno Froese is the executive director of Midnight Call Ministries and editor-in-chief of the acclaimed prophetic magazines Midnight Call and News From Israel. He has authored a number of well-received books, and has sponsored many prophecy conferences in the U.S., Canada, and Israel. His extensive travels have contributed to his keen insight into Bible prophecy, as he sees it from an international perspective.
