Washington DC - The face-scanning company contracted by the IRS to verify your identity made a short but extremely hefty mistake with its PR. Turns out the unsettling tech for scanning your face just got way more dystopian.

ID.me, the private company that does ID verification for the IRS, contradicted itself on the type of facial scans it does, after it started out with the claim that it only checks for a match between your face and your photo ID.

ID.me CEO Blake Hall's LinkedIn post let slip that the company also compares your face to its facial recognition database.

"ID.me uses a specific '1 to Many' check on selfies tied to government programs targeted by organized crime to prevent prolific identity thieves and members of organized crime from stealing the identities of innocent victims en masse."

That "1 to Many" means that ID.me checks its collection of face scans against your selfie to make sure you aren't actually someone else.

However, Hall's company advertised only using your beautiful face to see if it matches your ID in a one-to-one comparison, which is to be sure that you are really you.

The lack of transparency about how ID.me processes your private biometric data is the target of sharp criticism from various groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and tech watchdog STOP, who are worried about the privacy issues of having a third-party company handle your ID verification with the government.

What's more, a one-to-many verification system is agreed by experts to be more likely to run into problems with gender and racial bias.

ID.me is a private company standing between you and the ability to file your taxes online, and it has shown itself to be unreliable in the transparency department.