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Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals

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Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals

#91

Post by sanderjd »

comrh wrote: post #71
sanderjd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a very similar setup, except using YNAB[0]. I never felt like I really used Mint, besides just going and looking at my balances and (infrequently) thinking, "huh, looks like I'm over-budget again". With this setup, I feel like I'm taking matters into my own hands, which has had a noticeable impact on my spending and planning discipline. Thanks for the link to your project, looks really useful! [0]: https://www…

YNAB recommends the manual entry of purchases to better understand the relationship between the things you buy and your money. This has helped me be much less impulsive and more aware of the large money sinks in my life (lunch!). Whatever setup works for you to help you budget though, it is great software.

Yep! I did that for awhile, and still do it quite often for purchases while I'm out and about at target, grocery stores, restaurants, bars, and coffee shops. But for me, importing dumps from my banks and going through each transaction to "accept" them is plenty enough for that mental jolt. The tedium of entering names, categories, and prices might be a bit more powerful, but just seeing every transaction is (for me) a 99% achievement of the same goal.

Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals

#92

Post by sanderjd »

shawkinaw wrote: post #76
sanderjd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a very similar setup, except using YNAB[0]. I never felt like I really used Mint, besides just going and looking at my balances and (infrequently) thinking, "huh, looks like I'm over-budget again". With this setup, I feel like I'm taking matters into my own hands, which has had a noticeable impact on my spending and planning discipline. Thanks for the link to your project, looks really useful! [0]: https://www…

Yeah. I actually really liked Mint, before it I had no idea where my money was going. But the security stuff started to bug me, and there were mounting frustrations with Mint's inflexibility that finally pushed me to go a different direction. Also, the first link I posted isn't my work, just a nice utility I found. I did roll my own Python for converting OFX to Ledger though, been meaning to clean that up and post it…

Yeah, as I looked at that project more, I suspected that I had been wrong in assuming it was your work. In any case, I hadn't seen it, and appreciated the link.

Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals

#93

Post by zymhan »

avemg wrote: post #44
snuxoll wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dumb part is banks are more than willing to support Quicken's Express Web Connect, which literally stores your username/password on Intuit's servers, logs into your online banking portal and downloads the .qfx files you would get if you did it by hand. This is the same company that owns Mint, and it's literally doing the same thing! Oh well, until banks decide to stop allowing users to manually save .qfx files th…

As a (reluctant) Quicken user, I was not aware that Express Web Connect credentials are stored on Quicken servers. Do you have anything to back that assertion up?

There's really no way around it, if Quicken is going to login to your bank account for you, it needs your password in cleartext somewhere on its server.

Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals

#94

Post by Terr_ »

sanderjd wrote: post #58
shawkinaw wrote: post #52

I used Mint for a long time, but eventually decided I didn't like them having all my bank login information, including security questions. So I switched to a setup where I download OFX data directly from my banks using a Python script [1], and use Ledger [2] to track spending, balances, etc. A big bonus of this approach is that I have complete control over the data, so if an import get screwed up somehow I can fix it…

I have a very similar setup, except using YNAB[0]. I never felt like I really used Mint, besides just going and looking at my balances and (infrequently) thinking, "huh, looks like I'm over-budget again". With this setup, I feel like I'm taking matters into my own hands, which has had a noticeable impact on my spending and planning discipline. Thanks for the link to your project, looks really useful! [0]: https://www…

FYI, if you use YNAB with Chase you might find that QFX payee/memo information is garbled. If so, here's a little script that can repair the file by cross-referencing your transactions against the CSV-copy.

https://github.com/DHager/chase_fixer

Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals

#95

Post by nickpsecurity »

retube wrote: post #87
shawkinaw wrote: post #52

I used Mint for a long time, but eventually decided I didn't like them having all my bank login information, including security questions. So I switched to a setup where I download OFX data directly from my banks using a Python script [1], and use Ledger [2] to track spending, balances, etc. A big bonus of this approach is that I have complete control over the data, so if an import get screwed up somehow I can fix it…

It absolutely blows my mind that people are happy to hand over their banking credentials to a third party. I would never in a billion years ever have believed it were possible for a firm to succeed predicated on that basis. I'm pretty sure that doing that in the UK instantly nullifies any protection you have against fraud etc.

I assure you all hackers in the late 90's were saying the same thing about the online banking concept. Here we simultaneously had all kinds of Internet-related security problems in media plus banks telling us to connect our money to the Internet. (Annoyed Picard meme here)

Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals

#96

Post by nickpsecurity »

laotzu wrote: post #84
debacle wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockbuster didn't have legislative scaffolding and bureaucracy throughout the entire world on its side.

The bigger they are the harder they fall

2008 proved you wrong for the one's that had what the parent referred to. Confess to crimes and crash economy results in $1 trillion bailout, no audits, some fines, and criminal immunity. Doesn't happen every day in industry.

Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals

#97

Post by theptip »

shawkinaw wrote: post #75
mey wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advantage I see Mint has is they don't require OFX as they appear willing to scrape sites for content.

Yeah, but the advantage of OFX is that it is read-only and can use different credentials for authentication (depending on the bank.) Another advantage I forgot to mention is that I couldn't use my bank's 2FA with Mint.

Aahh, I've been moaning for ages that banks should implement a read-only interface for services like Mint; I had no idea that one already existed. I think this is the nail in Mint's coffin for me. Thanks!

This does invite the question of why Mint isn't using (or even just offering) OFX read-only credentials... or do they?

Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals

#98

Post by theptip »

davidu wrote: post #3

If the banks cared they would provide either token-based API like oAuth or at the very least, a read-only password for users to give these sites that aren't fully credentialed. Customers will always want to extract their data.

This. I've been wanting this sort of thing for ages.

It could actually be extended into a very compelling product; imagine being able to issue not only read-only tokens, but a token which authorizes the bearer to withdraw up to $100/month. Parents could issue such tokens to children for emergencies, or other such situations.

Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals

#99

Post by amsb »

davidu wrote: post #3

If the banks cared they would provide either token-based API like oAuth or at the very least, a read-only password for users to give these sites that aren't fully credentialed. Customers will always want to extract their data.

It's amazing that we can grant revokable, read-only and audited access to our social accounts, but not our bank accounts. Even though the largest aggregators operate under some level of federal supervision (via FFIEC and the OCC), there is an obviously better way. TxPush (http://txpush.org) looks like an initiative in this direction. There will likely be an ongoing need for aggregators to maintain access to laggard financial institutions and possibly to buffer load on the bank servers as consumers use more and more financially connected apps.

Re: Big Banks Lock Horns with Personal-Finance Web Portals

#100

Post by curun1r »

snuxoll wrote: post #11
Someone1234 wrote: post #2

This is the major difference between the US and EU. In the EU this isn't the "bank's customer data" this is the "customer's data." The customer actually has a legal right to see what data is held about them by the bank, and the bank has a legal obligation to make sure that data is accurate and up to date.

The dumb part is banks are more than willing to support Quicken's Express Web Connect, which literally stores your username/password on Intuit's servers, logs into your online banking portal and downloads the .qfx files you would get if you did it by hand. This is the same company that owns Mint, and it's literally doing the same thing! Oh well, until banks decide to stop allowing users to manually save .qfx files th…

I'm not sure about Quicken (which, incidentally, is being divested, so it won't be part of Intuit soon enough), but Mint uses the same internal service for communicating with financial institutions as Quickbooks and TurboTax.

By tokenizing each account, it ensures that if a breach of any of those products were to happen, the bank authentication credentials won't be leaked.

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