The San Francisco Chronicle has an article written by David Lazarus in which the author claims that users of the online versions of Intuit’s TurboTax or H&R Block’s TaxCut software are tracked during their filing process through the use of web bugs.
Both Intuit and H&R Block claim any data collected is used only in quality assurance purposes, but some privacy advocates are unconvinced that either company will not be tempted to sell such data to a third-party marketing firm in the future, particularly when both use the services of DoubleClick, a company that has sparked previous privacy concerns to process the data coming from the hidden trackers.