As part of a promotional campaign, H&R Block recently mailed free copies of our TaxCut® tax preparation software to a select group of people whom we believed would find this software useful to prepare their 2006 tax returns. Some of the recipients were former clients from our retail, online and software businesses, while others were names from purchased lists.
For a small group of former clients, the company inadvertently included some personal information in the mailing label. Embedded within the more than 40-character source code were the nine digits of the recipient's Social Security Number (SSN). These digits were not formatted in a way that identified them as an SSN, and to an unknowing observer they would appear to be random digits within a very long character string. However, the recipient may have recognized his or her own SSN. H&R Block quickly recognized the error and is voluntarily notifying all affected recipients to advise them of the situation and offer helpful information.
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