Some congressional Democrats say three large tax preparation firms sent “extraordinarily sensitive” information on tens of millions of taxpayers to Facebook parent company Meta over at least two years.

  • Dark Arc@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If you’re wondering who but don’t want to read the article:

    Their report urges federal agencies to investigate and potentially go to court over the wealth of information that H&R Block, TaxAct and Tax Slayer shared with the social media giant.

    • SpaghettiProgrammer@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yikes. Side question- anyone know if GDPR protects against stuff like this?

      We really need a way to protect our data in the US. (I know GDPR isn’t related to US)

      • Dnn@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        GDPR generally forbids sharing personalized data without your consent. I don’t know if the penalties are as severe as they are when failing to report a data breach though.

        We really need a way to protect our data in the US.

        Not sure if that was implied but the GDPR only applies to EU citizens. You’re right though, you ought to.

      • eric5949@lemmy.cloudaf.site
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        1 year ago

        Some states do have at least something, Virginia and California that I know of. We aren’t Europeans though to gdpr doesn’t apply to us, we just get tangential benefits from companies who don’t want to have two ways of doing things depending upon if you’re in Europe or not. If all those websites that added opt in cookie boxes to their websites and whatnot wanted to strip all that out and serve special pages to Europeans they could.

        • grahamsz@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Except H&R Block have offices in the EU and they, knowingly, serve EU citizens living in the US (and likely EU citizens living in Europe).

    • Scanzy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Holy shit why are these companies doing anything with Meta. This is super scary.

      I don’t want anything to do with Meta, but now I can’t use pretty much any service without Meta getting my data anyway? I want off this ride.