WSU professor says IRS is breaking privacy laws by mining social media

Spokesman reports:

Those Facebook posts from your vacation on a white sand beach, or that purchase of a fancy new vehicle, could be attracting views from the federal government.

As its staff shrinks, the Internal Revenue Service has turned to mining social media and large data sets in search of taxpayers to audit, a Washington State University professor says in a recent report in the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law.

People should be aware “that what they say and do online” could be used against them by the IRS, said Kimberly Houser, an associate professor of business law in WSU’s Carson College of Business.

Her 55-page report is studded with examples of how the IRS has turned to social media and data analytics for enforcement, including a 2013 fraud case in which a Florida woman was convicted after bragging about being the ‘Queen of Tax Fraud’ on Facebook.

For you rookies out there.