Popular tax filing software, such as TaxAct, TaxSlayer, and H&R Block, reportedly violated financial privacy by sending sensitive personal information to .
According to an investigation by The Markup, tax filing websites such as TaxAct, TaxSlayer, and H&R Block have been found to be secretly transmitting sensitive financial information to Facebook when Americans file their taxes online via its widespread code known as a pixel that helps developers track user activity on their sites.
As modern life increasingly moves online, our ability to understand the impact of the Internet on society has grown critically dependent upon the benevolence of tech platforms. To date, corporate data sharing programs have largely failed to meet the needs of the research community aimed at this problem. In this talk, the shortcomings of previous corporate data sharing initiatives and identify requirements that must be met by future systems will be outlined. In addition, Mozilla Rally, a data platform that addresses some of these system requirements will be presented. The talk will focus on the following properties of Mozilla Rally: user data donation and concomitant consent architectures, alternative corporate governance models, and community-led software development and release practices. The talk concludes with discussion of lessons learned during the creation of Rally, as well as possible future directions that similar efforts could take. Bio: Rebecca Weiss is an award-wi