Back at the beginning of the year, I wrote about a plan by the IRS to require taxpayers to verify their identities with facial recognition software company ID.me in order to access their online account with the IRS. At the time, I, like many others, warned that the proposal carried with it significant privacy concerns for taxpayers and would likely create yet another hurdle for taxpayers attempting to contact an already-unresponsive IRS.
Bowing to broad public concern about the plan, the IRS eventually dropped its proposed agreement with ID.me. But in the aftermath, it’s only become more clear that the agency’s judgment in agreeing to make ID.me the IRS’s data gatekeeper is another unfortunate instance of the IRS doing a poor job safeguarding taxpayers’ private information.
Read Full Article »
