Launch HN: Penny (YC W17) – a personal finance coach • Hacker News Board

Re: Launch HN: Penny (YC W17) – a personal finance coach

#91

Post by Rainymood » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 6:38 AM UTC

>Why does Penny need my bank login information? >Penny uses your bank login information to establish a connection with your bank, so that she can automatically retrieve and organize >your transactions.

>Does Penny store my bank login information? >Penny never stores your bank login information. After she first establishes the connection to your bank, she gets a separate, secret >access code to retrieve your transactions from your bank. That way, she can access your transactions without ever needing your bank >account credentials again.

How does this work exactly? What about banks that do not have an API. I've been wanting to write a similar app for myself but see NO way to log-in securely if the bank does not offer an API.

Re: Launch HN: Penny (YC W17) – a personal finance coach

#92

Post by flukus » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 6:41 AM UTC

Rainymood wrote: post #91

>Why does Penny need my bank login information? >Penny uses your bank login information to establish a connection with your bank, so that she can automatically retrieve and organize >your transactions. >Does Penny store my bank login information? >Penny never stores your bank login information. After she first establishes the connection to your bank, she gets a separate, secret >access code to retrieve your transacti…

They screen scrape the banks website. Absolutely awful from a security perspective. Even if a particular site is trustworthy, it's not a practice that should be encouraged.

Re: Launch HN: Penny (YC W17) – a personal finance coach

#93

Post by Rainymood » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 1:31 PM UTC

flukus wrote: post #92

Rainymood wrote: post #91

>Why does Penny need my bank login information? >Penny uses your bank login information to establish a connection with your bank, so that she can automatically retrieve and organize >your transactions. >Does Penny store my bank login information? >Penny never stores your bank login information. After she first establishes the connection to your bank, she gets a separate, secret >access code to retrieve your transacti…

They screen scrape the banks website. Absolutely awful from a security perspective. Even if a particular site is trustworthy, it's not a practice that should be encouraged.

I did this but when I told people i got my nose pointed on how illegal it is, how do they get around this? I'm seriously curious

Re: Launch HN: Penny (YC W17) – a personal finance coach

#94

Post by flukus » Thu, Mar 09, 2017, 10:56 PM UTC

Rainymood wrote: post #93

flukus wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They screen scrape the banks website. Absolutely awful from a security perspective. Even if a particular site is trustworthy, it's not a practice that should be encouraged.

I did this but when I told people i got my nose pointed on how illegal it is, how do they get around this? I'm seriously curious

I don't think it's illegal anywhere, although it might violate a TOS and a bank may try to block it at any time. They could also block connections from certain IP ranges if the scraping is done one the server.