By: Wall Street Journal
Date: February 7, 2022
The Internal Revenue Service is scrapping its use of a private facial-recognition system to authenticate taxpayers’ identities for online accounts, the agency said Monday after criticism from lawmakers in both parties over privacy concerns.
“Everyone should feel comfortable with how their personal information is secured, and we are quickly pursuing short-term options that do not involve facial recognition,” IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said in a statement on Monday.
The IRS has been using the service from a company called ID.me for people to validate and verify their identities before opening online accounts and accessing sensitive personal tax data. The agency was also planning to phase out access to online accounts except through ID.me, starting this summer. ID.me referred questions to the IRS.