IRD sharing data with social media firms w Associate Professor in Commercial Law at the University of Auckland, Gehan Gunasekara: 11 September, 2024

It recently came to the public’s attention that the Inland Revenue Department had been providing social media firms with the personal details of taxpayers to be used in marketing campaigns. 

While the IRD have tried to reassure taxpayers that their details were anonymised using a hashing process that would replace the letters in their names with numbers, many have raised concerns about the potential privacy implications that could come with their personal data being sold to social media companies, as well as the efficacy of the hashing process itself. 

Wire Host Oto spoke to Gehan Gunasekara, Associate Professor in Commercial Law at the University of Auckland, to discuss the IRD’s selling of taxpayer data to social media firms and its potential implications.