Online Tax Prep Companies Shared Taxpayer Personal Data With Meta and Google

Why not? Software downloaded onto one's computer repeatedly "phones home" to download the software company's own advertising and to encourage the user to update. There's snapshots of how the software is being used for, er, improvements and better efficiency in the user interface. It's hard to find commercial software that isn't constantly checking its network connection and is designed to be used purely off line.

There's nothing new here. Marketing has always been very good at drawing inferences about consumers and getting enough about it right that targeted advertising really works. In a two-unit apartment building I lived in years ago, the mail wasn't placed in mailboxes; everything was shoved through the slot in the outside door. We saw each other's mail. The wife upstairs was pregnant twice during the period in which we were neighbors. Somehow she started getting advertising for newborns like diapers and other supplies. They just knew she was in her 7th and 8th months. It was uncanny. This was probably from mailing lists.