I'm very disturbed by the sudden request for "account verification" that is very privacy intrusive, requiring either a mobile phone that gives them my billing address, or providing information (including my social security number) that they then use to scrape "from publicly available sources to verify your identity."
Not only have I been using and paying for online TurboTax for years, but any previous verification has been done via my registered email address (just like it was 8 days ago when I logged in to start my taxes).
Unfortunately I see this as another sneaky grab for personal information. While they do have most of this information, they have never needed to "verify" my phone number - so now they know my phone and carrier. Small stuff, but seriously, just another unnecessary erosion of privacy. This will be the last year I am a customer.
Edit: In addition, the "How does this work" link and the "Learn More" link on the page are not valid - they take you to the "Oops no match" page. This has privacy grabbing spam written all over it. I am no longer willing to to use products, free or paid, that blatantly try to monetize my personal information. If this is what Intuit is doing, shame on them. If not, then consider rethinking your account verification so that it doesn't look like that is what you're doing.
