From Breitbart: The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said it will no longer use face-recognition technology for taxpayers who are interacting with the agency online, CBS News reported on Tuesday.

The agency’s decision to scrap face-recognition comes after lawmakers, privacy advocates, and taxpayers vocalized concerns that the image-based system from verification company ID.me could lead to data security issues. According to the report:

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The IRS said the shift away from use of the facial-recognition technology will “occur over the coming weeks” to avoid disruptions during tax filing season, which is already facing a backlog of returns and paperwork. The plan had drawn criticism among civil liberties advocates and ordinary taxpayers over concerns that the system — which requires users to upload their ID and submit a selfie or video chat with an agent — could provide troves of personal information to hackers…

The IRS in a statement said it will create “an additional authentication process that does not involve facial recognition,” though the agency did not go into specifics…

According to Axios, the U.S. government has been “increasing its use of facial recognition technology overall.” The publication cited a recent GAO report, which found that at least ten federal agencies “plan to expand adoption of face recognition.”

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(Excerpt from Breitbart. Photo Credit: Getty Images)