Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 62 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#51

Post by heavymark »

People's willingness to give their information depends on how much they trust the company. Mint is owned by Intuit which is the same company most all of us trust providing all our financial data to for tax purposes each year.

For customers to trust your company you will have to have a lot of financial backing and support of big names in the industry. And when Mint first launched people were a little less concerned about giving up data. Now a days people are much more aware of the implications so you would be fighting an uphill battle.

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#52

Post by NeutronBoy »

laurencei wrote: post #7

I'm actually looking for a bank feed/API service for banks in Australia. Does anyone know of one?

I'm not sure if they have API access, but ANZ Money Manager [1] is basically the AU equivalent to Mint - consolidated reports/expense analysis/budgeting/etc across all your accounts (including non-ANZ accounts and cards).

[1] http://www.anz.com/ANZ-MoneyManager/

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#53

Post by runamok »

jdeibele wrote: post #26

My understanding is that they use http://www.yodlee.com for getting information from your accounts. That's pretty much what everybody does. I turned it off and deleted my data because the bank or brokerage would change something and break the automatic downloads and things would get out of date. I believe banks and brokerages should have two levels of access: one where you can move money and one where you can look bu…

Totally agree. You could even limit it by whichever app you want to give access to.

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#54

Post by runamok »

m12k wrote: post #19

I don't use Mint, but to me, the main question is whether I perceive the company to have more to lose by abusing the power I grant them than they would gain from doing so. A small fly-by-night company might make a quick buck by embezzling people and then disappearing, but a bigger company has much more value tied up in its brand and customer base, so they would have too much to lose. It's not a bulletproof approach (…

I think the main issue with this philosophy is Mint is a very juicy target for hackers and it only takes one person on the inside to "turn bad". The company itself can have the best of intentions.

That being said I use them too...

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#55

Post by lewisl9029 »

Is there a self-hosted or client-side version of Mint that's also open-source? If not, I think there's an opportunity here.

If we have to resort to scraping for banking data, I'd personally prefer to do the scraping by myself and for myself rather than trusting any third parties with my credentials.

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#56

Post by true_religion »

vishbar wrote: post #34
jdeibele wrote: post #26

My understanding is that they use http://www.yodlee.com for getting information from your accounts. That's pretty much what everybody does. I turned it off and deleted my data because the bank or brokerage would change something and break the automatic downloads and things would get out of date. I believe banks and brokerages should have two levels of access: one where you can move money and one where you can look bu…

My bank, Capital One 360, has something like this. You can give a read-only access token to an external service and change/disable it at will.

Bank of America has it. They call it Account Management, but AFAIK they charge for using it at least if you're a business account.

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#57

Post by gkanapathy »

jdeibele wrote: post #26

My understanding is that they use http://www.yodlee.com for getting information from your accounts. That's pretty much what everybody does. I turned it off and deleted my data because the bank or brokerage would change something and break the automatic downloads and things would get out of date. I believe banks and brokerages should have two levels of access: one where you can move money and one where you can look bu…

I believe Mint does not use Yodlee, while most other sites that offer similar functionality do.

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#58

Post by angdis »

gcb0 wrote: post #44
IanCal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I didn't think it was a bad idea, because it is clearly explained that Mint can't make changes to your accounts. Mint can do anything that you could do with the same credentials. Unless you have read-only credentials, they can technically make changes using your details.

i wouldn't expect people from this site falling for this marketing shenanigans...

I wouldn't call it "shenanigans" unless there were ever a case of Mint making any change to a user's account. So far none. They're clearly not trying to trick people into giving up credentials for nefarious purposes.

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#59

Post by jlgaddis »

angdis wrote: post #58
gcb0 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i wouldn't expect people from this site falling for this marketing shenanigans...

I wouldn't call it "shenanigans" unless there were ever a case of Mint making any change to a user's account. So far none. They're clearly not trying to trick people into giving up credentials for nefarious purposes.

I sort of agree, but to say that they can't do anything besides query if certainly false if they have the credentials that I, myself, use to log in and perform transactions.

It's kinda like when Dropbox said they couldn't access user's files even though they technically could.

Re: Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

#60

Post by jlgaddis »

calinet6 wrote: post #20
eswat wrote: post #16

I’ve been using Mint for several years. But there actually was a point two years ago where I got concerned about them having all my credentials. I deleted my account and changed all my passwords. Fast-forward a few months later and I’m using them again. Whatever concerns I had about data security did not outweigh having immediate information to all my accounts and reports that would take me too long to generate mysel…

That's a huge tell: the convenience and value of having all your accounts aggregated far outweighs the security concerns, and frankly even the myriad and difficult and frankly frightening methods of connecting your accounts. That's why people do it, and there's clearly an opportunity for a better experience...

Absolutely there is. I only log in to Mint perhaps once every few weeks, but I would much rather not use it at all -- or, more correctly, I would rather them not have my credentials.

But... I have personal checking and savings accounts at the local credit union, personal checking and savings accounts at one of the large, major banks, business checking and savings accounts at the (same previously mentioned) credit union, as well as several store and major credit cards issued by various financial institutions. (I tracked my vehicle loan within Mint as well, until I decided to just go ahead and pay it off.)

The convenience of being able to see all of them, quickly, within the same "single pane of glass" apparently outweighs the fears that I have or I wouldn't use it. An attacker acquiring the credentials for most of those accounts wouldn't be too much of an issue, honestly. The one account I would worry about would be my (primary) personal checking account but, luckily, the credit union's web site/software is pretty limited with regard to what kind of transactions could be performed... and, now that I think about it, I'm not sure I can initiate any transactions via their web site. The one thing I know I can do is the "online bill pay" but I would have to physically go into one of their branches to sign up for that before it was even available.

Post reply on HN