Meta faces lawsuit for harvesting financial data from tax prep websites

A group of anonymous people have sued Meta, accusing the company of violating users' trust and privacy. H&R Block, along with other popular tax-filing websites such as TaxAct and TaxSlayer, have been sending users' sensitive financial information to Meta.

A piece of code called "Pixel" is a piece of code that companies can use to track visitors and target them with ads. Personal information, such as income data, filing statuses, refund amounts and dependents' tuition grants, were transmitted to Meta through that code. By the time the report came out, the tax-filing services had already changed their settings to stop sending information or were rethinking how they used the program.

When the news first came out, Meta said that advertisers are not allowed to share personal information and that it uses an automated system to block sensitive content. The lawsuit acknowledges that Meta requires businesses to have lawful rights to collect, use and share user data before giving the company any information. Meta uses a "broken honor system" that has resulted in "repeated, documented violations" according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit is trying to get class action status for people who used tax prep services. The services weren't named as defendants.