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TRADE YOU 'BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS' FOR THE PRINCIPAL'S 1040

March 25, 2005

Michelle Malkin reports on an unintended side effect of "peer-to-peer," or P2P, file sharing programs. These programs are used to trade music and movies across the internet. Ms. Malkin reports that a number of home-prepared tax returns have been inadverently saved to locations on the computer drive that are shared to enable file swapping, and are now available for public viewing:

Don't believe it? Download LimeWire and type in "federal return" or "1040" and see what pops up. I did it, and within a few minutes, I had access to scores of tax returns that included names, addresses, social security numbers, and bank account numbers.

Among hundreds of tax returns I saw, here are three I downloaded (note: sensitive information has been redacted): 1, 2, 3.

Hat tip: TaxGuru.net.

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