An e-mail address or fax number wrongly typed can reveal too much information to a perfect stranger Even when everything goes right, tax day is an all-around unpleasant event. This year, though, Mike got thrown the sort of tax mystery — along with the usual number crunching and paying up — that makes me stop what I’m doing and worry: “For the last several days,” he says. “I’ve been getting mail, addressed to myself, with someone named Mary’s data in it. I suppose she could have typed my completely unrelated e-mail address into her forms, but I suspect the TaxAct system skewed the user names and e-mail addresses. What puzzles me, though, is I have not used TaxAct for years and have no idea how my address got in there.” This sort of accidental spewing of important financial (or medical) records into the ether is something that often troubles me — especially at this time of year. I once fired an accountant who faxed me someone else’s tax returns instead of my own. He didn’t seem concerned enough about the gravity of this error for me to trust him again. I realize this is a busy time of year, but there is a lot of personal data in a tax form. [ Find out how to protect other sensitive data, such as your medical records, in the Gripe Line posts “Why you care about insurance fraud” and “Refusing a $20,000 gift” ] I also once received a complete stranger’s entire medical records via fax from a doctor’s office. This happened several times, actually, even though I called and told the doctor’s office about it each time. In this day of bad hats and identity thieves, the potential for human error at the fax machine — or e-mail address line — is dangerous. If this many important documents have been accidentally sent to me, how often does this happen? Are my records being faxed to strangers, too? I don’t have the answer. But I forwarded Mike’s letter to TaxAct to find out what happened in this case. Leigh Aragon, a spokesperson for TaxAct investigated the incident for us. “This is the first year that e-mail address has been used when electronically filing a return,” she discovered. And it seems that Mike’s e-mail address is the one, according to Aragon, that Mary used when entering her tax return. “Thus Mike is receiving Mary’s confirmation e-mails,” says Aragon. “We can’t help what e-mail address someone uses but we can prevent future e-mails [going to Mike.]” TaxAct customer service removed Mike’s e-mail address from its system and sent Mike a note asking him to delete all the e-mails about Mary he had received. But Aragon pointed out that, even with the mistyped e-mail address, this isn’t as big a breach of privacy as my erstwhile tax accountant’s sloppy faxing habits were. “Even though Mike received Mary’s confirmation e-mail, no sensitive taxpayer data is transmitted via e-mail. You cannot view the actual tax return information without a user name and password.” Got gripes? Send them to christina_tynan-wood@infoworld.com. Technology Industry