Plaid settled $58M lawsuit over alleged consumer data sharing • Hacker News Board

Re: Plaid settled $58M lawsuit over alleged consumer data sharing

#21

Post by mistrial9 » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 6:04 PM UTC

bananapub wrote: post #6

it's so frustrating that this sort of shit keeps happening. 1. banks create gap in market by not providing useful access to their customer's data by...their customers 2. regulators don't step in to fix this market failure 3. some company steps in! yay! 4. company decides that charging customers for providing a good and/or service is insufficient, they need to do something creepy with selling off the customers data 5.…

my colleague - you are missing the willing, enthusiastic, extensive and competing-to-out-do each other, aspect of tracking and selling profiles on "customers." I was told a story about a man in Florida making seven figures in the 90s by compliling and selling profiles, that were absolutely not legal and everyone knew it! so now its legal right?

Re: Plaid settled $58M lawsuit over alleged consumer data sharing

#22

Post by arthur_sav » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

hulitu wrote: post #12

ve55 wrote: post #2

It is particularly sad how common scenarios this are for users, especially in the US. I have known how terrible applications like Plaid (and alternatives) were, but at various points have been required to use them to do something like pay my rent (this is also a very common theme in my life: I strongly dislike a certain company or app, but find myself required to use them regardless, even knowing that my usage and in…

So in US if you have enough money you can do anything and then settle in court if problem arise.

The cost of doing business.

Re: Plaid settled $58M lawsuit over alleged consumer data sharing

#23

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

g_p wrote: post #9

cmer wrote: post #5

It is absolutely crazy that in 2021, banks still don't have proper secure APIs for other software to interface with. Plaid is a major disaster waiting to happen. Are there any banks moving in that direction? I know of exactly zero in Canada.

The UK and EU have both adopted effectively what you describe under PSD2 - the UK banks in particular were forced by their competition and markets regulator (CMA) to adopt open interoperable APIs. The end result, now it's available, is that you have 2 levels of API access. One is for access to account information (I tend to think of this as read-only access), and the other is to allow for "payment initiation" (think…

This is the template for US financial regulators and legislators to implement. Plaid is filling a regulatory vacuum.

Re: Plaid settled $58M lawsuit over alleged consumer data sharing

#24

Post by pbreit » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 6:10 PM UTC

ve55 wrote: post #2

It is particularly sad how common scenarios this are for users, especially in the US. I have known how terrible applications like Plaid (and alternatives) were, but at various points have been required to use them to do something like pay my rent (this is also a very common theme in my life: I strongly dislike a certain company or app, but find myself required to use them regardless, even knowing that my usage and in…

On the flip side, if banks are not going to make my data available on a better basis, what choice is there?

Re: Plaid settled $58M lawsuit over alleged consumer data sharing

#25

Post by echopom » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

> If all 98 million people were to file a claim, each would receive just 60 cents.

Thank you court of California to incentive startups and GAFA to use our data knowing their risk nothing.

Just to be clear , Plaid has raised 600+ Millions in it's lifetime , this is nothing for them.

Re: Plaid settled $58M lawsuit over alleged consumer data sharing

#26

Post by ydant » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 6:16 PM UTC

sergiomattei wrote: post #11

cmer wrote: post #5

It is absolutely crazy that in 2021, banks still don't have proper secure APIs for other software to interface with. Plaid is a major disaster waiting to happen. Are there any banks moving in that direction? I know of exactly zero in Canada.

The problem isn't banks not having APIs, the problem is not having standard APIs for accessing them. The situation wouldn't be any better if every bank had its own proprietary API, hence why Plaid exists.

The situation would be better than it is now, even with every bank implementing their own proprietary API. As it is now, the APIs may or may not exist - and a lot of times the fall-back for these services is web-scraping, using the same full access credentials the user has to use to log in otherwise. It's a security nightmare and it's fragile.

At least if the bank implements some sort of API that means some thought was probably given toward using tokens instead username/password, and some thought was given toward scoping the APIs - at least into read-only and read-write capable access.

Although if you read between the lines in some of the service descriptions and backend documentation, a lot of what Plaid (and Yodlee, and others) do is now a mix of scraping and private APIs the banks provide, but those APIs are only available to commercial entities they've signed a relationship with.

Obviously the ideal is public standardized APIs all banks provide with established security-focused practices and read-only limited data access as an option. But proprietary per-bank APIs available to the general public would be a good step forward.

Re: Plaid settled $58M lawsuit over alleged consumer data sharing

#27

Post by munk-a » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

zeroxfe wrote: post #19

hulitu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in US if you have enough money you can do anything and then settle in court if problem arise.

Most of the world works this way.

I disagree somewhat to this - it's certainly true to an extent but when it comes to gross negligence or malicious intent most of the world will seriously come down on you. Only in the US is intentional malice generally written off with fatalist cries of "It was inevitable that some market participant would abuse this system."

Re: Plaid settled $58M lawsuit over alleged consumer data sharing

#28

Post by WaxProlix » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 6:21 PM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #24

ve55 wrote: post #2

It is particularly sad how common scenarios this are for users, especially in the US. I have known how terrible applications like Plaid (and alternatives) were, but at various points have been required to use them to do something like pay my rent (this is also a very common theme in my life: I strongly dislike a certain company or app, but find myself required to use them regardless, even knowing that my usage and in…

On the flip side, if banks are not going to make my data available on a better basis, what choice is there?

Something that doesn't fleece and abuse its customers and then expose their data irresponsibly?

Re: Plaid settled $58M lawsuit over alleged consumer data sharing

#29

Post by akarma » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

I actually mentioned in a thread about Plaid in 2018 that they sold transaction history to third parties, and the cofounder came onto HN to explicitly deny that [1]. I actually felt convinced they didn't afterwards, as I couldn't imagine such a direct and clear refutation if it were true.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18655417

Re: Plaid settled $58M lawsuit over alleged consumer data sharing

#30

Post by foxcurve » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

shostack wrote: post #13

cmer wrote: post #5

It is absolutely crazy that in 2021, banks still don't have proper secure APIs for other software to interface with. Plaid is a major disaster waiting to happen. Are there any banks moving in that direction? I know of exactly zero in Canada.

What is the bank's incentive to offer this? Answer that and you'll have the answer to your question.

I see it as a differentiator and unique competitive advantage. New banks aren't solely competing on interest rates and fees, but also on social and personal interests.

I'll post a snippet we recently added to our pitch deck:

> Accounts like those catering specifically to the LGBTQ+ community (https://joindaylight.com), the Black community (https://firstboulevard.com), individuals interested in supporting renewable energies (https://www.tomorrow.one/en-EU/), and social media creators (https://www.trykarat.com/) have proliferated. Retail accounts catering to the unique wants and needs of software developers is a natural next step.