Inland Revenue giving thousands of taxpayers' details to social media platforms for ad campaigns | RNZ News
Inland Revenue is giving hundreds of thousands of taxpayers' details to social media platforms for marketing.
What the actual fuck!
I don't understand why they need to share anything other than "this is the campaign we want to run" eg, "we want to run an ad campaign to target adults under 30 returning to NZ, the ad will be this 'Student Loan Repayment' copy"
I don't understand why they are giving anything to Facebook at all
What the fuck. Did they ever consider there may be a reason I don't use those platforms?
Does anyone know more about this process?
If hashing anonymises the data, rendering it as a hash, how does Facebook use this information? How is it useful, and if it's not why upload it at all?
Also, do they upload the list then Facebook runs the hashing (after any US government secret requests have been processed), or is the hashing done before uploading?
I'm assuming it's so you have a unique hash representing the customer, but with Facebook's data if they know the birthday, name, etc then they could easily match it to a specific profile. And if they aren't matching to a profile then what makes it useful?
if they know the birthday, name, etc then they could easily match it to a specific profile
Thats exactly how they're able to de-anonymise the data... If it was truly anonymised then Facebook wouldn't want it...
I just don't get what exactly is being "anonymised" and how facebook can use it in that state. What information is IRD uploading to target the ads?
Basically, I don't understand why they are uploading data that they think is anonymised. Either it's anonymous and there's no reason to upload it, or it's not anonymous. I really want to understand the specifics of this!
From the first line in the article
Inland Revenue is giving hundreds of thousands of taxpayers' details to social media platforms for marketing campaigns
I'm not sure from this wording, if this means that FB et al are requesting the data for their own advertising campaigns; or the IRD are using these platforms to advertise.
"The lists uploaded monthly are for things like student loans where the overseas-based customer population is constantly changing with people moving overseas or returning home."
Implies that the IRD is the one advertising. But then it goes into hashing, if the data is anonymized; how is the data used to target for example, the delinquent SL borrowers?
Long story short, IRD are in damage control mode, saw that Facebook hashes the data, and hoped this meant they could spin it as anonymous. It's very, very not anonymous. I did some digging, which I put in another comment chain here: https://lemmy.nz/post/14206010/10952716
Basically, Facebook want to avoid having their customers break privacy laws for sharing data. Instead, the personal information like phone numbers, addresses, date of birth are hashed then compared against a hash of data Facebook already holds.
The idea is you aren't sharing personally identifiable data because facebook will only match data they already have.
However, the whole purpose is to match up a specific taxpayer to a specific facebook user. Not even close to anonymous, even if you squint and tilt your head.