The details of the article seem significantly less exciting and bombastic than the headline claims. If I understand correctly, H&R Block uses Google Analytics (and Meta's equivalent). That's about it?
You're never going to get rational discourse on this topic because people who don't know what they are talking about have poisoned the conversation by using bombastic language. E.g. "spy cam" that "scans tax documents" does not bear any resemblance to the events in question. People willingly gave their tax returns to H&R Block, who intentionally programmed their site to marshal that data into custom dimensions of Google Analytics.
Sure, and price fixing scandals are “just using email”. It’s not what they used, it’s what they did with it. In this case, what they did with it is share with Google a huge amount of extremely private, legally protected information.
If you and I have a legally binding contract that forbids you from sending me a certain class if information, and you then violate that agreement by sending it anyway, have you "shared" that with me, in a way that makes me your co-conspirator?
The totally free tax filing websites are the sketchiest IMO. Nobody builds and runs a free tax filing service without selling your data to pay for it. But I keep using them bc I'm cheap lol
