Inland Revenue has admitted to providing Facebook owner Meta with the names, addresses and other contact details of 268,000 taxpayers in 'raw' unencrypted form.

This news comes after an investigation into the IRD's use of social media companies to target taxpayers.

Queenstown employment relations consultant and initial complainant David Buckingham was surprised by this development.

"I did actually think they had some pretty good processes around at least hashing it - that wasn't really the focus of my initial complaint." 

LISTEN ABOVE