It was a regrettable incident and is contrary to any of our established procedures at H&R Block. Confidentiality of customer information is our No. 1 priority. |
Microsoft's Bill Gates could have filed for free. |
No one wants to get that envelope with Internal Revenue Service in the upper left-hand corner. No good can come of that, usually. |
The service will not cost them anything. |
The size of our mailing is competitive information and we do not reveal our figures. |
The Social Security numbers on the packages had no formatting that would make them stand out, and no one would have been able to easily identify them as a Social Security number. |
We believe the risk to be minimal and the only person who would recognize this as a social security number would be the recipient, and in most cases, recipients didn't even notice. |
We have been investigating this issue, but I do not know who was responsible for this breach of security. |
We think we are nibbling away at (that lead). Up until now the largest worry was 'What happens to me if I get audited?' But if you use any of our products, a tax professional will assist you in preparing for that audit. ...The reason we can do that is because we have the 12,000 offices around the country. |
We're not quite sure how (the IRS) came up with those numbers. It doesn't jibe with any of our research. |
While we firmly believe the risk is minimal, we viewed our primary responsibility was to communicate with the affected recipients to let them know it happened. |