[HN Gopher] Intuit to share payroll data from 1.4M small busines...
___________________________________________________________________
Intuit to share payroll data from 1.4M small businesses with
Equifax
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 323 points
Date : 2021-07-01 19:02 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (krebsonsecurity.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (krebsonsecurity.com)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| This is awful, _especially_ since there are a number of startups
| in the "Plaid for payroll" space that are explicitly making it
| up to the _employee_ whether they want to share their data,
| instead of it just getting vacuumed up by Equifax for everyone.
| That is, if you are applying for a loan, the loan website could
| pop up a "verify your employment data immediately with your
| payroll provider", you log in using your payroll creds, and then
| the loan company gets your data directly without having any
| access to your other payroll info.
| [deleted]
| tomrod wrote:
| As an employer, how do I prevent this.
|
| _Hell no_ is my visceral response (both initial and final).
|
| I employ people and must act to keep their trust. I wouldn't want
| this, ever, and most people I have spoken with agree.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| I've been using Intuit Quickbooks Self-Employed for my
| contracting work and it really fucking sucks.
|
| Paid invoices can't be added as transactions. Tax payments aren't
| correctly imported into TurboTax. The time tracker can't generate
| invoices.
|
| There are so many sharp edges that can make their way into my
| Schedule C that I'm worried about being audited. This software
| clearly doesn't come from the "Have you even fucking tried using
| it?" school of software design.
|
| And now on top of all that I have to worry about them selling my
| data to a credit agency that's a boil on the face of the economy.
|
| Is there a better accounting/tax package out there? The only
| thing Quickbooks Self-Employed does well is scan receipts.
| dheera wrote:
| I just use spreadsheets, if you design them well they work, and
| they're relatively portable between the few major spreadsheet
| products out there. LibreOffice if you're worried about
| corporate eyes on your data.
| mtm wrote:
| https://plaintextaccounting.org
|
| Not sure about receipt scanning though.
| toddmatthews wrote:
| just curious, why do you even need to scan receipts? Cant you
| just use a credit card and import transactions from the card
| provider?
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| The point of receipts is if the IRS ever audits you.
| toddmatthews wrote:
| is the credit card trail not good enough?
| kingnothing wrote:
| I don't think so. You could go buy $1000 worth of gift
| cards to give to your family on a business credit card
| versus legitimate business expenses. The receipt shows
| what you bought, a credit card statement only shows the
| amount.
| toddmatthews wrote:
| thanks
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| For amounts over $75, it is not.
|
| https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rr-03-106.pdf
| toddmatthews wrote:
| that's strictly for reimbursing an employee for an
| expense.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Good catch. I've been audited before, so I err on the
| side of caution and keep as much documentation as
| reasonably possible to substantiate business expense
| claims. Electronic storage is cheap, and audits are
| unpleasant.
|
| https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-
| employe...
| toddmatthews wrote:
| got it, makes sense, thanks
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Thanks again for pointing out my mistake.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Expensify has a really good scanner and sync-to-CC data
| system. I have only ever used it as an employee, but my
| understanding is that it has good backends synchronization
| with a variety of accounting packages.
| dheera wrote:
| I found Abacus much easier to use. Expensify was extremely
| convoluted, you had to create reports and then submit them,
| instead of just submitting expenses with a couple clicks.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| My understanding from a brief stint in an adjacent industry is
| that Xero is pretty good and popular for accounting, but I
| cannot vouch for it as an end-to-end solution for self-
| employment needs.
| buildint wrote:
| Xero is massive in Australia. Almost every small business
| uses it and every accountant supports it.
|
| It has a highly populated plugin marketplace to, which is
| where I think you need to go for the receipt evening part.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I use Xero for my business accounting. Works well. My
| accountant had never used it before, but had no problem
| grokking it.
|
| Intuit has my email address from an abortive attempt to use
| Quickbooks, about a decade ago. It sucked so hard, I ran
| screaming.
|
| Every now and then, I get an email from them, suggesting that
| I "reactivate" My account.
|
| The unsub link is worthless. I have to log in with the
| nonexistent account, in order to unsub. The reset password
| function doesn't work (non-existent account). I am doomed to
| get these emails for eternity, but they aren't frequent
| enough to be much more than an annoyance.
|
| But Equifax has a crappy record on data integrity. I expect
| an avalanche of penis pill spam, soon.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > I have to log in with the nonexistent account, in order
| to unsub
|
| I would consider this a CAN-SPAM violation. You can have
| your representative and AG apply some pressure.
| cure wrote:
| > The unsub link is worthless. I have to log in with the
| nonexistent account, in order to unsub.
|
| Ah, hey, that's the same level of incompetence as British
| Airways. I'm in the same boat there, but that's why
| /dev/null exists, of course :)
| [deleted]
| dawnerd wrote:
| Self employed wastes so much of my time. I had to completely
| redo everything this last tax year.
|
| Switched to godaddy's bookkeeping which still sucks but not
| many options out there.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I personally use GNUCash for my budget stuff but I know they've
| got a lot of business oriented tools and reports. Might be
| worth looking into.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| I've been using it for several years. I run all my freelance
| stuff through a specific checking account so I can just
| import all transactions and I have my p&L for the year,
| broken out by category etc etc.
| curun1r wrote:
| I remember seeing the Self Employed launch from inside the
| company. It was somewhat of a skunkworks project from 3
| engineers and they got a lot of internal PR for creatively
| targeting the gig worker market. I guess the plan was to
| eventually branch out to other self employed people, but the
| initial motivation was Uber drivers and such rather than small
| business owners, because that would cannibalize the QuickBooks
| Online market. It doesn't sound like much has changed in the 5
| years since I left. It sounds like you fall a bit in between
| their product offerings, but I wouldn't count on them handling
| all your needs because they'd rather people like you just moved
| to their full QBO product.
|
| I also remember attending a session that Intuit offered on the
| competitor landscape and being quite surprised that Wave wasn't
| covered. Intuit just doesn't take them seriously, but their
| products, to me, seem better than just about every competitor
| covered in the session, including Xero. They've got a self-
| employed offering [0] that might be worth experimenting with
| since you can start for free and only pay when you need the
| premium features.
|
| [0] https://www.waveapps.com/accounting/self-employed
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| Funnily enough, Wave discontinued their receipt scanning
| feature this month.
| nafizh wrote:
| Most probably, they outsource most of the software engineering
| to consultancy agencies known for H1B abuse.
| thinkingkong wrote:
| Bench works super well for your use case, provided youre Ok
| with cash basis bookkeeping.
| krisroadruck wrote:
| I'll add another nod for Bench. Been using them for 6 months
| now and they are friggin great.
| kayhi wrote:
| Is it just like a Dropbox to upload receipts and someone
| reviews it? Do they tell you what's missing?
| MattBearman wrote:
| If you're based in the UK I'd definitely recommend FreeAgent -
| https://www.freeagent.com
|
| Disclaimer: I used to work for them as a software engineer, but
| having used Xero when I was self-employed I can definitely say
| FreeAgent is better.
| deadbunny wrote:
| I can 2nd FreeAgent as a user of about 5 years.
| kareemm wrote:
| Second this. Been on FA for at least half a decade and it's
| great.
| astuyvenberg wrote:
| Can anyone confirm this information is actually shared? Last
| month, I went through a background check for a new position which
| used The Worknumber. Not all data was present & correct (a
| previous employer was acquired and that goofed some data). When I
| was asked by The Worknumber to correct it, they wanted a W2 and
| said (direct quote from web form):
|
| "Please redact or conceal any compensation related information on
| any documentation you submit. It is not permissible (either by
| law and/or company policy) for <new company> to view such
| information as part of your background check."
|
| So can the new company actually get access to the compensation
| information? Is that perhaps a state law?
| slumdev wrote:
| Equifax sells your salary data to employers so that they can
| negotiate against you.
|
| They use a subsidiary called The Work Number to keep this evil
| separated from their good name (ha).
|
| You can and should freeze your Work Number file:
|
| https://theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/
| anm89 wrote:
| Should be the top comment
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Not sure why I say that, but the whole credit score idea sounds
| horrible.
| base3 wrote:
| If they'll sell our QuickBooks data they'll sell our TurboTax
| data too.
| luckyorlame wrote:
| what could possibly go wrong.
| jamesbetts wrote:
| I donno.. this again? https://www.equifaxbreachsettlement.com/
|
| Can anyone really trust Equifax with our data, let alone Intuit
| feeding them more?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| This screams for implementation of financial data privacy
| legislation. Please consider emailing your Congressional rep
| using Krebs' link as a citation.
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| Great. Another several hundred pages to the legal code, another
| several hundred pages of regulations that all but 3 people will
| have the time to read and understand. No thank you. This
| country already has too many laws and regulations. We don't
| need more.
|
| How about leaving the free market alone?
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| The free market is me emailing my representative and asking
| them to change this.
| [deleted]
| jjulius wrote:
| >How about leaving the free market alone?
|
| Intuit has been aggressively anti-consumer and this
| particular instance is no different. They exist to benefit
| themselves at the expense of the average joe. Until the free
| market stops operating in said fashion, your question will
| continuously earn a resounding, "Nah," from me.
|
| Edit: I am particularly perplexed by this post, given that OP
| recently suggested governments start "selling, if not
| mandating, its own operating system software to consumers and
| businesses alike" because they felt like consistent OS churn
| resulted in too much unnecessary e-waste. I don't disagree
| with the concern about e-waste, but I'm having trouble
| squaring away the dueling perspectives here.
| tomrod wrote:
| Nope. I am in the free market too and my "best alternative to
| negotiated agreement" (BATNA) is dog droppings, ergo I have a
| vested interest to level the freedom of the playing field.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > How about leaving the free market alone?
|
| Well, if the free market worked, Equifax would have been sued
| into oblivion right now and no other company would be stupid
| enough to try BS like this.
|
| But the free market doesn't work, so you need to protect
| yourself. The only way we can protect ourselves from greedy
| corporations is through onerous regulations with teeth.
| seanalexander wrote:
| Intuit aggressively lobbies to keep the IRS from doing tax
| reforms. Who's actually messing with the free market here?
| [deleted]
| flowerlad wrote:
| Equifax and their "The Work Number" service limit your ability to
| negotiate a higher salary when you get a new job. The Work Number
| has your salary info -- your current employer gave it to them.
| And your new employer knows your current salary -- they get it
| from The Work Number.
|
| If this isn't a serious violation of your privacy I don't know
| what is.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/exclusive-your-employer-ma...
| sys_64738 wrote:
| This data shows how much your gross is per pay period and shows
| all bonus payments.
| mywittyname wrote:
| But hey, when you win the inevitable class action lawsuit, you
| might get a $50 McDonalds gift card and a 1 year subscription
| to LinkedIn Premium.
| antisthenes wrote:
| From Equifax?
|
| Fat chance. I'm sure many people would take the $50 McD gift
| card in a heartbeat.
|
| You're more likely to get 2-3 months of some sort of their
| protection service that will be "value-equivalent" to $50,
| not anything tangible or liquid in value.
| pessimizer wrote:
| And in order to get it, you have to click through a ToS
| that allows them to share your salary with future potential
| employers.
| ineedasername wrote:
| More like a $50 credit at Experian/Intuit/The Work Number.
| It's pretty common for class actions to actually _benefit_
| the defendant when plaintiff lawyers take their $millions in
| exchange for driving more business towards the services they
| were fighting. Which then simply change their ToS to allow
| the behavior they were sued over anyway.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Wow. It's shocking that this is legal.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Here's how to freeze this information:
|
| https://theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/
| neilv wrote:
| It seems transparently slimy how Equifax tries to discourage
| opting-out.
|
| Beyond the difficulty of opt-out, you have to send them
| _more_ info (including your SSN, a copy of a government ID,
| and a proof of address that they offer can include your W-2
| or paystub).
|
| If only Equifax were even 1% as diligent about avoiding data
| breaches as they are at making sure no one can maliciously
| opt you out of them sharing this data that no one wants
| shared.
| pxeboot wrote:
| And since governments themselves use it to look for tax and
| benefits fraud, they are unlikely to to do anything about it.
| lopis wrote:
| This comment makes no sense to me. Why would the government
| need to buy this data from third party? Both employers and
| employees have to disclose this information to the government
| and if they don't match, there's a problem.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| they buy data under the stupid assumption that you gave it
| to whoever therefore its been legally made free game.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Who says they buy it? They probably just call up a buddy
| over at the NSA and have them send it over
| pxeboot wrote:
| States normally don't share data with each other or the
| feds.
|
| As an example, CA might use The Work Number to check if you
| are working in NV but not claiming or under reporting that
| income on your CA medicaid application.
| slownews45 wrote:
| Local agencies (which often administer programs) very
| commonly DO NOT have easy direct access to your IRS tax
| filings.
|
| In addition - some people don't file returns that they
| should.
|
| In addition - sometimes their are crazy backlogs govt /
| IRS side (transcript services have been very off and on,
| 35 million paper filed returns still pending processing).
|
| Work number does pay day to pay day updates, so is
| current to within a few days usually.
| visualradio wrote:
| In that case, it sounds like it would be a good idea for
| the federal government to use the interstate commerce
| clause to start dismantling the work number system?
|
| The original purpose of the interstate commerce clause
| was to ban state and local governments from collecting
| sales taxes on transactions cross state lines, so that
| states had to compete to keep excise taxes as low as
| possible, and rely more on direct land taxes on property
| owners instead. This was because Madison and many of the
| other early federalists and democratic-republicans were
| influenced by the Physiocratic school of economics which
| thought there should be no internal taxes on trade and
| labor, that all internal taxes should be direct taxes on
| land.
|
| So if state and local payroll taxes and the work number
| system are the new rakeoff allowing state and local
| governments to fund property tax cuts for the rich, it
| would make sense for federal government to continue its
| grand historical tradition of using the interstate
| commerce to suppress this nonsense, in order to encourage
| any states with broken property tax systems that are
| struggling to raise revenue to appoint commissioners to
| redo their assessments instead, in order to discourage
| state and local governments from taking the easy way out
| and imposing regressive taxes on workers with the least
| leverage to complain.
| csharpminor wrote:
| Their data can also be seriously flawed. When I went to apply
| for a mortgage a few years ago I was nearly rejected because
| "The Work Number" told my lender that I worked at Arby's and
| made $11.75 / hour. I've never worked for Arby's and my name is
| pretty unique (so I don't think it was a duplicate name issue).
| In any case I searched all 4 other people in the U.S. who share
| my name, and none of them had worked at Arby's either to the
| best of my knowledge.
|
| I had to call Equifax, spent 1.5 hours on the phone with
| multiple confused reps until I found someone who could change
| my record. I thought there would be some kind of validation
| process, but nope they just asked me where I worked and how
| much I made.
|
| It is such a broken system. I'm dumbfounded that Equifax hasn't
| been sued out of existence.
| a3n wrote:
| I guess we're all just money on the table, eh?
| MR4D wrote:
| In other news, Facebook is buying Equifax.
| grenoire wrote:
| Source? Can't find anything, add an /s if you're jesting.
| gouggoug wrote:
| How to put a freeze on your employment data:
|
| 1- Head to https://theworknumber.com/view-my-data-sign-up
|
| 2- Create an account: you must create an account and make note of
| your account ID (that you choose yourself). You will be asked for
| it.
|
| 3- If you're curious, download your report (I did, it was
| interesting to know what they have on me)
|
| 4- Then go here https://theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/
|
| 5- You have the choice of using Email, Mail, or Fax, or you can
| call the number: 866-222-5880
|
| 6- I chose to call 866-222-5880
|
| 7- Press 1 for English
|
| 8- You will be presented with 3 options
|
| 9- Option 3 "To report a possible identity theft" is what you
| want
|
| Someone will answer your call, ask your name, phone number, email
| address and finally ask why you are calling. Tell them "I'd like
| to put a freeze on my employment data". They will ask you for a
| reason; just say "It's personal".
|
| You will be asked for your account ID and other information to
| verify your identity (they will ask your SSN).
|
| Finally you will receive a text message with a code. You will
| give this code back to your interlocutor.
|
| They will put a freeze on your data.
| dstick wrote:
| Can I just say: unfathomable. This should not be even 1/10th
| this hard.
| csharpminor wrote:
| As an aside, I really wish there was a public repository of
| corporate customer service hacks. Maybe it already exists?
| foobiekr wrote:
| Might be worth putting an employee data freeze in place:
| https://theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/
| codazoda wrote:
| Email, mail, or fax a PDF form. Nice. /s
| gruez wrote:
| If it was only fax or snail mail only I'd be more outraged.
| The hassle associated with email is roughly symmetric. In
| other words, the hassle you having to fill out a form and
| attach it in a email is roughly equal to the hassle of
| equifax having to hire someone to manually process the
| emails. This is as opposed to something like fax/mail which
| is much more of a hassle for the average consumer (digging up
| a fax machine, or having to print something off and buying
| stamps/envelopes) than equifax (getting the mail delivered to
| their doorstep). Having an email rather than a web form was
| probably because they figured there wouldn't be enough
| request to justify building a CRUD app to manage it.
| korethr wrote:
| Snail mail can be a hassle, but on the flip side, with
| snail mail, you can send in the request via certified mail
| with a requested return receipt. This creates a legal
| record of when they received your request. Thus, if they
| don't act on it in a timely fashion, you can prove it. It
| is only tangentially related, but in Patio11's article on
| handling bogus entries on one's credit report[1], there's
| this wonderful line: 'I was sending "certified mail, return
| receipt requested", which is Dangerous Professional for "Do
| you like paper trails? I like paper trails. I particularly
| like paper trails where the United States Federal
| Government attests to the exact minute your firm learned
| the contents of this letter."' While not quite the same
| situation, I suspect such admissible-in-court-as-
| evidence[2] traceability of communication is of equal use
| here.
|
| 1. https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-
| credit-r...
|
| 2. This is my intuition talking here -- I am not a lawyer.
| If you have legal questions, talk to one. But, IMO it would
| be utterly bizarre if USPS record of when a specific piece
| of mail was received were _not_ admissible as proof of
| claiming that company got your request.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Cant wait for equifax to then turn around and sell this as a
| feature to communities that want to keep people under a certain
| financial income out. We are rolling towards a Chinese style
| social credit system that is administered by financial companies
| instead of the government.
| cheriot wrote:
| America has been doing that for the last 75 years. New data is
| not required.
|
| 1. Municipality sets minimum lot size and maximum density rules
| so living in the "nice" neighborhood requires buying more land
| than you actually need. Originally this replaced race based
| zoning.
|
| 2. Can't afford that much land? Go live in the other
| neighborhood that allows fourplexes, apartments, and condos.
|
| 3. Now that your community is segregated, it's easy to adjust
| city services so schools, roads, and parks are better in the
| rich neighborhoods.
|
| Equifax credit scores are part of the system, but the root of
| evil is in land use policy. Deep red and deep blue local
| governments are all doing this.
|
| "More than 80% of America's large metropolitan areas were more
| racially segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990"
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/28/us-racial-se...
|
| The report that interview is based on,
| https://belonging.berkeley.edu/roots-structural-racism
| Kharvok wrote:
| One could look at this and say that with higher mobility over
| the last 30 years people will increasingly select to live in
| socially cohesive communities.
|
| We know this to be the case in other areas.
| acituan wrote:
| I don't doubt the consequences you've laid out, but isn't
| rent seeking[1] a simpler explanation as the motivating
| principle? For spatial goods, keeping a cap at density means
| preventing an increase in supply and keeping/increasing the
| value extractable of the already owned land.
|
| [1] To clarify I am talking about "economic rent" in its
| wider meaning.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Or just simple misaligned incentives. At the time
| communities are formed and lots are subdivided, they're
| planned out based on the prevailing population densities
| and consumer desires _of the time_. People move in because
| they like how the community feels, and then are
| disincentivized toward changing it because any change would
| take it away from the local optimum that they bought into.
| The people who _would_ benefit are those who don 't
| currently live in the community. Property owners get a
| vote; prospective property owners do not get a vote; ergo
| nearly all communities are biased towards the needs of
| existing property owners over newcomers.
|
| Talking to boomers, I don't get the sense that either
| racism or property values are the motivating force behind
| zoning restrictions. Rather, they want to preserve privacy,
| natural beauty, traffic, neighborliness, and the general
| aesthetic that they bought into. Racial discrimination,
| high housing values, and homelessness are consequences that
| fall out of that, but most people voting for these policies
| are not thinking about those. It's "fuck you I got mine",
| but out of apathy rather than malice.
| cheriot wrote:
| People will talk about "protecting property values", but
| I'm going to claim that's not the underlying motivation.
|
| 1. The history is easy, these rules were created originally
| to maintain racial segregation. The Color of Law covers
| this in detail. For a shorter form, check out
| https://grist.org/cities/zoned-out-one-womans-half-
| century-f...
|
| 2. Upzoning a property makes it more valuable. It's giving
| back property rights to the owner. There's no cost to the
| owner, but now large developers are a potential buyer. The
| _real_ selfish move is to demand that ONLY my property is
| upzoned.
|
| When municipalities consider upzoning, we don't see 2.
| Instead we get people talking about "destroying" the
| neighborhood. Renters are referred to as transients.
| Occasionally the mask comes of and we hear about "those
| people". When people genuinely think those things are going
| to happen, they also think their property value will go
| down.
|
| It's like people talking about the civil war in terms of
| state's rights instead of slavery. Makes perfect sense if
| you think of slaves as property.
|
| Edit: To be clear, I think there's a lot of people that
| think of single family housing as a "lifestyle" that they
| prefer and are not necessarily bad people. However those
| with the most visceral reaction that actually become
| activists tend to be a combination of racist and classist.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Why does everything that isn't maximal urbanism have to
| have some nefarious motivation to it? Maybe people just
| want privacy, a certain architectural aesthetic, and a
| lifestyle that isn't possible with overcrowding.
| cheriot wrote:
| It takes a certain motivation look at modern segregation
| and say, "but my aesthetic."
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Most people are just pissed (me included) that in the
| vast majority of the US it's literally illegal to build
| housing and neighborhoods that many of us would like to
| live in.
| ipaddr wrote:
| It is not illegal to build housing in the vast majority
| of the US. Building neighbourhoods in existing cities
| takes city approval. You may want to throw up condos on
| the waterfront or knockdown low income housing to put up
| your storefront or build low rises on farms. Those ideas
| could work but your low rises need millions of dollars of
| work to get pumping,electrical,fiber. Removing low income
| housing or building condos in front of the waterfront has
| tradeoffs for society as a whole you must be weighted.
|
| Most people understand this on some level and are not
| pissed off.
| cheriot wrote:
| Most residential zoned land is single family house
| exclusive. Allow development there and there's no need to
| knock down low income housing or sprawl over green space.
| But that's not the choice municipalities make.
|
| The municipal financial argument doesn't hold water.
| Urban areas generate tax revenue beyond their cost of
| infrastructure.
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| it's easier to control people if they're all living
| inside a huge city.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I have no idea what kind of control you're insinuating.
| ipaddr wrote:
| From recent history covid lockdowns come to mind.
| dheera wrote:
| What we really need is new credit line companies (credit cards,
| loans, etc.) that _don 't_ rely on the those shitty
| organizations.
|
| We also desperately need a system that doesn't profit off the
| poor and hand it in the form of benefits to the rich.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| They won't ever be that direct. It will just ding your credit
| score.
| _jal wrote:
| They already do. This is not new, just a new source.
|
| https://www.equifax.com/product-sheets/income-verification/
| harikb wrote:
| At this point though, I prefer a government run program.
| Considering Equifax can't manage to keep my data safe or keep
| their Java packages updated, and in addition not be liable to
| any damages caused, it is practically a public liability. Why
| not just make the government do it. At least they wont sell the
| data.
| minhazm wrote:
| The government isn't much better at keeping your data safe:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management.
| ..
| dheera wrote:
| Yes, but if the government screws up, the onus is on them
| to fix the lack of a secure way to identify a person. Re-
| issue new SSNs (maybe with more bits of entropy) to
| everyone, give everyone a UUID and public/private key,
| issue national IDs, whatever it takes.
|
| If your bank or company or Equifax leaks all your SSNs the
| government won't take a shit, they'll just let people
| continue stealing your identity.
| aksss wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_U
| nit...
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Right, they are not held to account by lawsuits but by
| elections.
| novok wrote:
| I don't think govt will keep their java packages updated
| either.
| [deleted]
| etxm wrote:
| Fuck both of these companies.
| beams_of_light wrote:
| I own a small business, and have resolved to NEVER use any Intuit
| product. It's not very hard, and actually opens one up to
| possibilities that make life a lot easier.
| slownews45 wrote:
| Very likely you will be using them in some form I'm afraid.
| Hard to avoid - especially for smaller businesses.
|
| For example, since many other small businesses use them, you
| may be paying your invoices through their payment portal for
| bills sent to you.
|
| They've done deals with bill.com (which bought divvy for 2.5B).
|
| Your payroll provider may provide payroll information to assist
| employees with their intuit turbotax filings.
| anm89 wrote:
| I think you are willfully misinterpreting what the parent
| said.
|
| Not paying them directly for services is very different than
| never engaging in transactions which involve something as a
| third-party. And it means this person isn't directly paying
| them to do anything.
| slownews45 wrote:
| They said very simply that they "have resolved to NEVER use
| any Intuit product".
|
| I just took that to mean what they said and pointed out
| it's hard to avoid using these bigger players software.
| lucasisola wrote:
| What do you use for accounting software?
| neilv wrote:
| If anyone has a one-person small business _without_ payroll,
| I liked GnuCash for my consulting work (including abusing the
| invoicing system for time-tracking). https://gnucash.org/
|
| If I had to do payroll, I'd probably try to find a SaaS that
| I could contractually lock to strict confidentiality. I
| wouldn't be in the business of saving pennies by selling out
| my employees' privacy.
| ineedasername wrote:
| So, propaganda-wise, it's basically "Yay! We're selling your data
| and that's a great thing because of service X that we could
| provide _without_ selling data! "
|
| Which is especially crappy considering it's a paid product, not
| some advertising-funded service.
|
| GDPR is far from perfect, but we (the US) could really use
| something at least minimally comparable.
| notefxpartner wrote:
| Posting from throwaway.
|
| In my previous role at a large payroll provider, Equifax and few
| other players in the space over last two years were extremely
| interested in getting access to SMB payroll data, as it was the
| most economical way at scale to verify income for half of US
| labor force employed by SMBs.
|
| Equifax was by far the most aggressive in both offering very
| generous compensation for that data and insistence as part of the
| deal on an opt out mechanism.
| neil_s wrote:
| As in, they were insisting that employers have to opt out of
| the data sharing instead of opt in?
| notefxpartner wrote:
| Yes. During initial meetings Equifax cited that their ADP
| deal has single digit opt out rate.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Doesn't the employee have anything to say in this?
|
| The employers software vendor Intuit steals the data and sells
| it to Equifax for their own profit. The employer gets nothing,
| but could decide to opt-out. The employee who's privacy is
| being grossly violated gets nothing and cannot even opt-out of
| sharing the data?
|
| GDPR doesn't sound like such a bad idea now...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The employee who's privacy is being grossly violated gets
| nothing and cannot even opt-out of sharing the data?
|
| Government employees' pay information is public information,
| and they seem to function fine in the world. I like Norway's
| public tax record system, price transparency would certainly
| help the vast majority of participants in the labor market.
|
| Only Equifax having access and selling info to other large
| organizations is the worst of all worlds, though.
| notefxpartner wrote:
| So Equifax has a separate brand for this: TheWorkNumber.
| Technically each employee can opt out here:
| https://theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze In practice
| nobody knows that opt out exists.
|
| To be fair employees do get ~some~ value out of this, in form
| of of less paperwork verifying their employment during
| mortgage and rental applications. It's a different question
| whether it's valuable enough with all privacy downsides.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| FWIW, if your employer participates in employment verification
| systems with the credit agencies (like equifax), your salary and
| some other basic info of you working their is listed. You'll just
| need signed authorization from that person and their SSN. $30
| bucks later you got their salary.
| kylegill wrote:
| I'd say I'm generally not a big fan of the having to opt out
| approach.
| ThaDood wrote:
| Opt-out approach - polite way of saying "What we are going to
| be doing is most likely WILDLY unpopular, so rather than risk
| our potential pool of sucke-customers, we want are going to
| assume you want in, unless you explicitly tell us no."
| vfclists wrote:
| Don't employers require employees' permission to share their
| data?
| Method-X wrote:
| Not saying I agree but (I think) the issue is that salary data
| is technically owned by the employer and not the employee.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| The salary number itself yes, but it's only useful when
| linked to the identity of the employee. And in places with
| sane privacy laws that's illegal to do without the employee's
| consent.
| _jal wrote:
| If you're going to do business with sociopathic weasels like
| Intuit, demand a Data Use Agreement.
|
| As part of your contract, enumerate allowed uses of the data and
| forbid the rest.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Anyone create an opt-out service that scans business/news
| releases and percolates that info up in a presentable way?
| swiley wrote:
| >Why should I worry about privacy if I have nothing to hide.
|
| Microsoft isn't sharing telemetry data with these companies yet
| but they've shared data from other organizations they own.
| maddyboo wrote:
| So, an employer can opt out, but can an employee opt out? It's
| their data, after all.
| slumdev wrote:
| Yes, you can, and I encourage everyone to do so:
|
| https://theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/
| jedberg wrote:
| > It's their data, after all.
|
| Is it? I don't think there is any law that says an employer
| can't just publish your salary data, which would imply it is
| their data. And in some cases they are required to share it,
| such as with the IRS, SEC, social services, state IRS, child
| support, (Edit: this might be wrong -- and in some states they
| are even required to share it as part of a reference request).
|
| It of course would not be a smart way to retain employees
| giving the data out willy nilly, but the law seems to say that
| it is the employers data to do what they want.
| yebyen wrote:
| > and in some states they are even required to share it as
| part of a reference request.
|
| Whoa, hold on. Is that really true? I found this list of
| states which have _banned_ asking for salary data as part of
| a job application, but are there states where you 're
| _required_ to share it with a company just because they 've
| asked on the application and are requesting it for
| verification?
|
| https://www.hrdive.com/news/salary-history-ban-states-
| list/5...
|
| Which states?
| jedberg wrote:
| I honestly don't know. I've been told that by HR folks that
| I know but never looked into it since I'm in California and
| it's illegal here. It's possible that it is bad
| information. I'll update my comment and remove it since
| neither of us can verify it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Personally, I don't take anything coming from HR as
| gospel.
| kristaps wrote:
| Damn it feels good to live in the EU some days!
| [deleted]
| rmesters wrote:
| "New service that will let millions of small business employees
| get easy access to employment and income verification services"
| It feels so very old school to have to share a data dump with a
| single "trusted third party". 1. There's plenty of payroll API
| aggregators out there. Launching a more powerful Intuit API would
| have sufficed. 2. People can already use open banking to verify
| their employment/income levels with their bank account.
| slownews45 wrote:
| The Work Number pays for this access.
| Method-X wrote:
| Wow. I'm moving my company away from Intuit immediately and I'd
| encourage others to do the same. This is a massive violation of
| privacy.
| koolba wrote:
| > In selling payroll data to Equifax, Intuit will be joining some
| of the world's largest payroll providers. For example, ADP -- the
| largest payroll software provider in the United States -- has
| long shared payroll data with Equifax.
|
| Does Gusto sell them your salary data as well?
| edawerd wrote:
| We most certainly do not
| ncallaway wrote:
| Oh thank goodness! Absolutely my first question when I saw
| this thread, and such a relieving answer.
|
| I really don't have the time and energy to switch to a
| different payroll provider.
|
| Thank you!
| mieko wrote:
| As someone whose pay is processed by Gusto, thanks. That was
| straightforward.
| swiley wrote:
| Thank you.
| [deleted]
| koolba wrote:
| Good answer.
| jkeuhlen wrote:
| I noticed that you all have a similar feature integrating
| with truework.
|
| How does that work in comparison?
| asadlionpk wrote:
| Thanks for the direct answer.
| flowerlad wrote:
| This is the same Equifax that could not keep hackers from
| accessing your data.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Equifax_data_breach
| cmehdy wrote:
| Intuit and Equifax is like a duo of truly horrible companies
| that I'm definitely not surprised to know are working together.
| It's like Minus and Cortex except neither has big brains and
| the whole thing is not a funny joke.
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