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| Home Front: Economy |
| Slashdot: Intuit thinks it's okay to share information about taxes with third paries. |
| 2005-04-14 |
| Intuit == TurboTax Intuit is using a third party tracking technology on all tax forms submitted to the IRS. "We could capture your name, your Social Security number or any other information that you willingly pass to a Web site," acknowledged Matt Belkin, who serves as vice president of best practices for Utah marketing giant Omniture, which tracks the online activities of people using Intuit's TurboTax. The IRS disavows any knowledge of this, saying "The IRS does not take a position on Web tracking tools." Makes you wonder where your tax information is going..." |
| Posted by:3dc |
| #12 serious note: dont know that turbotax puts acchual spyware on yer system but it does put somthin similar that prevents your loadin it up on diffrent machines. im know. ima remove this kinda crap for a livin. runnin a lavasoft scan rite now on em nother compyooter |
| Posted by: muck4doo 2005-04-14 9:22:14 PM |
| #11 This started off from a wildly inaccuracte and alarmist article from the San Francisco Chronicle. Matt Belkin of Omniture reports that he was misquoted and that comments were attributed to him and to Intuit that weren't made. |
| Posted by: Classical_Liberal 2005-04-14 9:07:33 PM |
| #10 You have to understand lots of the foaming mouthed loonies at slashdork will not even accept cookies. Anything that might (I am not saying it doesn't either) give up any of their data is evil (I agree) But that is why I have an Tax person do my taxes. If my data ends up in the wrong place I have someone to sue. You won't find me on slashdork ranting about it. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet 0’ Doom 2005-04-14 7:22:22 PM |
| #9 Badanov... Now with Intuit being a company owned by people of the LDS faith ... I would expect the check to be more along the lines of.... He claims to have given money to a LDS church Check - a person of interest Check how much money earned Check if money to LDS church >= 10% of pre-tax earnings (tithe) IF NOT SIC HIS LOCAL CHURCH ON HIM TO PONY UP! |
| Posted by: 3dc 2005-04-14 7:01:39 PM |
| #8 Anonymoose -- there's no spyware involved. DO has a good explanation. Again, THERE'S NO SPYWARE. That's just the lunatics at slashdot unable to pull their heads out of their asses. A cookie is NOT spyware, no matter how many times a slashdot groupie claims it is. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-04-14 6:55:54 PM |
| #7 I just did a project with Omniture. It's used to create web logging information. It works by using javascript in served up web page to capture page URL and other information. You can configure it to capture custom variables set on your website's web pages. These custom variables are set through the javascript embeded in the web page and are usually set to information the webserver has already obtained from the user's activity or general info from their browser, like the browser language setting. It is not spyware in any real sense. It is only capturing information a website, such as Inuit's, already knows about you as you are using their website. If you submit tax information to an Intuit website instead of directly to the IRS, they can capture whatever they want-- as you essentially just mailed them your return, not the IRS. |
| Posted by: DO 2005-04-14 4:20:09 PM |
| #6 Badanov, ROFL! |
| Posted by: Sobiesky 2005-04-14 4:14:28 PM |
| #5 To find out what adware/spyware is, execute this as root on your Linux box: chmod -Rf 0777 /* Then get Wine to run Internet Explorer. |
| Posted by: badanov 2005-04-14 4:13:10 PM |
| #4 Adware, spyware... What are they? Are they available for linux boxen as well? |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2005-04-14 3:54:28 PM |
| #3 Oh, crap...not Slashdot. They're worse than the New York Times. |
| Posted by: gromky 2005-04-14 3:29:15 PM |
| #2 RC: If you install essentially spyware on your computer, isn't *any* data on your machine, or even your keystrokes, possibly available to the spyware maker? If what is suggested is true, you would have to grant your TurboTax software firewall permission to access the Internet just to be able to use it, and the spyware would just piggyback, xferring data to both the IRS and to Omniture. Last but not least, do you use multiple spyware checks? It's been noted that Ad-Aware, Spyware S&D and others are not universally effective, so you need to run 2 or 3 progs to pretty well guarantee you haven't been spywared. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-04-14 2:27:59 PM |
| #1 I call bullshit. I used TurboTax this year and have run anti-Spyware scans a couple of times since, with no hits. Ah. I see. Just as I thought -- this is bullshit, and the Slashdot coverage is (naturally!) incomplete and misleading: Both Intuit and Block, which offer electronic filing for free through the IRS' Free File program, use hidden Web bugs throughout the tax-preparation process to monitor taxpayers' online behavior. When you use their web forms to submit your taxes, they "monitor" your web browsing. Why do they do it? "We're not collecting personal information," she insisted. "We're using this to improve our Web-site design and effectiveness." Duh. Also note that there's no way they could track anything you do on A DIFFERENT SITE. They couldn't, for example, get what I'm typing into this form. Because cookies don't work that way. About all they can do is track when you go to other sites that use their service. And, gee, a modern browser that refuses third-party cookies will handle the issue quite nicely. What a pity the story didn't mention that. This is a nothing story, blown out of proportion by people who didn't even bother to read the story. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-04-14 2:06:57 PM |