Thousands of NZ Taxpayers’ Details Handed to Social Media Platforms, Tax Office Admits

New Zealand’s Inland Revenue Department (IRD)—which holds the personal details of millions of New Zealanders, even children who hold after-school jobs—has been giving personal information to social media platforms in a format it insists is safe but which experts say is not. Data on hundreds of thousands of people have been given to the platforms to enable the targeting of IRD’s marketing campaigns. The IRD had not personally informed the people whose data was disclosed that they were doing so, but an individual uncovered the practice and characterised it as a “betrayal” of taxpayers. However, its privacy policy, available on its website, carries the general disclaimer: “We sometimes provide hashed and fully anonymised information to social media channels when placing advertisements.”...