Get your taxes done using TurboTax

Not sure if anybody will read this.  12 pages of "Yeah I had this problem too" and "I completely reset my Mac and the problem didn't go away" doesn't really help shed any light on this issue.

But, if anybody reads this, here is what I think is going on... (keep in mind, I am not an expert, I am just a grumpy old coder...)

"Keychain" is built into MacOS.  You can read about it here: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-keychains-to-store-passwords-mchlf375f392/mac.

It seems to me that MacOS must provide a "keychain" service to apps that run on MacOS.

It seems to me that Intuit must have decided to use that service (intentionally or unintentionally) when writing TurboTax 2024.

I expect that the wording:

TurboTax 2023 wants to use your confidential information stored in the "bpxl_uuid_service" in your keychain.  To allow this, enter the "login" keychain password

is ENTIRELY controlled by Apple, not by Intuit.  I expect that this is the popup window that MacOS displays when an application first attempts to gain access to an existing keychain (or maybe even create a new one... I don't know).

I got very concerned when I saw this wording and refused to go any further until I learned more.  I found both this thread, and the Apple documentation I referenced above.

I launched the Keychain Access application as described here: https://support.apple.com/guide/keychain-access/view-the-information-stored-in-a-keychain-kyca1085/m....

I searched for the string "bpxl" and saw the following:

This was very interesting.  It showed that this was an "application password", for the "bplx_uuid_account" managed by the "bplx_uuid_service" (aside, I have no clue for what "bplx" might stand ... it would have been awfully nice if it said something like "intuit_uuid_account" and "intuit_uud_service"), and that it was last modified on March 31 2018.  (I guess I just told all of you when I must have filed my taxes in 2018 🙂 ).  Not sure why it has been untouched since then... perhaps Intuit rehired a old contracting agency to update TurboTax 2023.

When I clicked on the (i) info button at the top to view information about the bpxl thingy I saw this:

and when I clicked on the "Access Control" button, I saw this:

So it seems like I must have allowed TurboTax 2017 to have access to this keychain way back when... and that is the only application that has access to this keychain.

Knowing all of this now, I feel more comfortable entering my login password into that scary looking popup box, clicking on "Always Allow" and moving on with trying to do my Taxes sometime before March 31st of this year.

Hopefully, somebody might find this helpful, or at least comforting.