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Once again Big Tech appears to have made big gains of the backs of American consumers by grabbing their sensitive tax return information to develop marketing algorithms.

Facebook and Google got access to customer information through online tax services including H&R Block, TaxSlayer and TaxAct as taxpayers used those services to do their taxes. All manner of information was available including amount of taxes owed, marriage and dependent information, income and even what keys taxpayers used filling out their forms.

A group of congressional Democratic lawmakers revealed the breaches in a letter to the justice department, the IRS and Federal Trade Commission last week and asked for an immediate investigation. H&R Block and TaxAct said they were working to stop the breach from happening again while TaxSlayer called the report false and misleading.

For its part, Meta said it tells it business customers not to include sensitive information on its customers using its business tools, basically blaming the tax companies for the breach. The incident is another example of the pervasive reach of Big Tech and its ability to invade privacy through purpose or mistake.

In a 2018 case, Cambridge Analytica, a group that raised money for ex-President Donald Trump, had worked with a Facebook app developer to access private information of some 87 million Facebook users. The company ended up paying a $5 billion federal fine.

We all know we’ve agreed to the tiny print we never read in Facebook user agreements and for other sites. So some blame lies with consumers. But in a digital world overwhelming consumers with necessary tools of the web required for life and employment, there should be more protection from the crimes of not reading tiny print.

Big Tech should readily disclosed in prominent notices the risk of using any of its platforms. Companies using the web for commerce should do the same. And the government agencies urged to start an investigation into this case should do so immediately.

Consumers bargain a lot when they sign up to use the high tech tools necessary in today’s world, but they shouldn’t have to bargain away their privacy.

— Mankato Free Press, July 19