@Rachel- I realize that is a very old comment, and I know some of those things are supported now in 2009. Worth a shot at the very least.

If you have to store your passwords (Quicken, Mint) then it is too insecure. If you computer gets hacked then what. At the end of the day even if your bank takes the loss you have the pain and suffering of dealing with data loss and your privacy.

And no I don’t trust them at all. They are guilty until proven innocent and then they are still guilty. I mean a free site – they are not doing it for charity – what is in it for them ? Your Data.

The best tools are the simple ones. I use a spreadsheet and it servers my purpose. I know when I am overspending. It just feels wrong.

Do not Trust website where you have to give your banking Data to connect to a third party like Mint or others.
You will find on the web, website who provide anonymous connection to manage your Budget.

Take care of your Money and your privacy.

1) Read your on-line banking terms and conditions. You will likely find language that absolves the bank of ANY liability if you give away you username/password to a third party. This is exactly what you are required to do for this service.

2) Read the Yodlee or Mint T&Cs. They completely absolve themselves of liability for data loss no matter what the reason. Even if they publish it to the Croatian State Prison Journal under the ‘hacker’ section you have zero recourse.

So, sign up and you have zero recourse if any compromise leads to you losing everything. But hey, it’s convenient and you might get a good credit card offer….

Will Citibank release me of all liability when they find out that I have VOLUNTARILY given my credit card account and password information to a random third party? The same goes for my Bank account. I feel that people are setting themselves up for some real headaches somewhere down the road.

Take car with this type of website.

I gave up Mint and i use MyBudget-online.com who is very simple to manage. And i didn’t give my email or personals informations to get an account. I love it.
Here is the link: http://www.mbudget-online.com

[...] going,” he says. Sign up for a free online money-tracking program like Wesabe [review], Mint [review], or Quicken Online [...]

[...] mint No demo but more info? Or would you like to read a review? [...]

[...] the competition “How is this different than Mint or Wesabe?” I asked. “Why would anyone pay for this when there are free [...]

[...] not already using a personal-finance software package, tinker with a program like Quicken or Mint and decide if it’s something you can commit [...]

The Wayback Machine has archives for mint.com from December of 2000 to August 21st of this year.

Comment #23 above, Aaron Patzer, says he’s the “Founder & CEO, Mint.com.” Really? ‘Cuz, he’s not listed as one of the three co-founders on the company background page.

In 2000 they were in the business of “Market INTelligence for investors and analysts” and “specializing in developing and implementing quantitative trading strategies for client and proprietary accounts.”

Also, at that time, “Mint.com is 43% owned by the Man Group Plc, a publicly-traded financial services company based in London…”

What became of their “clients” and those accounts before Mint became a personal online finance tool?

What is their current relationship with the the Man Group, now known as MF Global?

Ask yourselves what will become of your personal information and data if and when they reinvent themselves and move onto some other finance business.

I think these are reasonable questions Mint should answer.

As for the anonymous bit, if they have your login, they have your name, address, etc easily enough. It’s as easy as clicking “View Statement”.

I want it to be hard to get to my banking information. I also don’t trust an internet startup to manage so much as my shoe size. Sorry, but I’ll give you information like this when you’ve been in business for at least 30 years, and last but not least there isn’t just the technology aspect to worry about. There’s the people.

With technology you can make hard and fast rules. People play it loose. They’ll bend the rules, even break them if they think there’s a good enough reason. So you can play off their emotions, their insecurities, and their mistakes. You can’t trust people. People are often incompetent and people with computers are worse. They can make stupid mistakes very quickly, and on a massive scale. As a programmer I’ve seen it, I’ve done it, and I’ve had to help pick up after it.

I read this review and wanted to try it out – that was until:

1) it can’t see any bank that uses image verification
2) cant see student loans
3) cant see car loans
4) cant see your house payments

Uh…..what’s the point?

As for this post, you spelled “CAPITAL” one wrong as “CAPITOL” at the top

-Mike

p.s. You accidentally deleted my comment, so i figured you fixed the problem

[...] che ti consente di tracciare le tue spese, capire dove spendi di più e come risparmiare. Trovi qui una breve panoramica. Mint è un servizio gratuito e, almeno negli USA, puoi collegarlo in automatico ai tuoi dati [...]

Never give would be robbers/hackers your entire security set-up including the hurdles they have once inside your building.

Be a little more vague next time please.

Otherwise I really like Mint and would recommend it. You need to support way more credit unions though as I cannot use your site at this time due to Sound Credit Union not being supported.

Thanks.

[...] Mint: A Fresh New On-Line Personal Finance Tool. SC, a reader of Get Rich Slowly, provides an in-depth look at the new online money management software. For Consumerism Commentary’s take, read Sasha’s review. [...]

I tried Mint a short while back; it is definitely pretty, but you pay for the babying – you have no control over anything.

I was also frustrated to keep getting exclusively “tips” like those described in the review – clearly wrong, and clearly designed to make money off referrals. I don’t like getting tips based on kickback schemes.

Yodlee! Wesabe! Yodlee! Wesabe!

Star Money Articles for the Week of November 12…

Here are some recent interesting posts from the MoneyBlogNetwork and beyond: Consumerism Commentary highlights some useful websites. AllFinancialMatters covers the right mix of stocks and bonds. MightyBargainHunter gives some good career advice. Five C…

That’s exactly what Wesabe does. They are very explicit that your data is YOUR data, and they’re just there to help you understand it better, and to connect with other people who are in the same boat.

From their security page:

Unlike other services, we do NOT ask you to enter your bank or credit card passwords into our web site. Instead, we offer a unique feature – a software program that runs on your computer and keeps your passwords safe, encrypted on your local drive. We never have access to your passwords in any form, and upload only the data we need to help you get more for your money. Throughout the upload process, we use industry-standard encryption, so none of the data is in a format that can be read by hackers. Your account at Wesabe is stripped of all personal identifiers, including your name and email address.

For members who want absolute control over access to their data, we provide a tool that allows them to extract data from their financial institutions and manually upload only the transactions they choose.

So, basically, your bank account information is only on your PC … never on their servers. You can find out more at Wesabe.com.

(I don’t work for them.)

I wish there were a free simple client application that could be installed on my PC without storing/maintaining account info on a 3rd party internet server.

I would never, ever use a service like Mint, or Yodlee, or any other sort of financial information aggregate site. I don’t even use services like Google spreadsheets or calendar or anything like that. The fact that people are uploading all of their info like this to a central location simply boggles my mind.

Saying that Mint is safe because their servers are protected by guards or whatever is irrelevant. You don’t need access to their servers to compromise Mint, you only need an Internet connection.

The risks far, far outweigh any possible benefits you would get from a service like this (Mint or any other). I guess the fact that people are gullible enough to use a service like this means there will always be plenty of work for computer security people like me, which is a good thing, but wow.

However, they are mining the data as they can say “well, BofA, we have xy people on our site, they pay an average of yt% APR, and only zy% use your bank — wanna make an advertising deal?” To my understanding, that is still data mining — regardless of whether or not a person’s name is attached. Their goal is clearly to make the most money possible, and I’m not so clear that that goal is second to providing a service to consumers.

Obviously, mint is out there to make money from advertising (they’ve said this, and theirs is a free service), and how else are they going to pitch to advertisers without mining the data they have?

Security AND privacy with financial information is always a hot topic (as it should be), but at some point, people just have different values and different comfort level. I certainly don’t go out every day, assuming the next company I buy stuff from is going to screw me over or sell me out. But I’m also not naive enough to trust everything on first impression (whether it’s a good or bad one).

If you really want to use a website like this, do yourself a favor and take proactive action. If you don’t want to bother with reading all the steps you can take, the policy they use, the terms they impose on you.. then definitely don’t use the service.

It’s the same with credit cards, you wouldn’t want to sign up with one without reading carefully what you’re getting into.

We’re also known as the white hats that people pay to be a little paranoid.

I tried out Mint and other sites like it, Geezeo and what’s that other one.. and they all seem to be pretty basic so far in terms of a personal finance management tool. Mint looks pretty nice and was easy to use, but definitely lacking in capabilities that other yodlee powered site has (no support for loans and brokerages yet). Geezeo was working okay (uses cashedge as data middleman), it supported my student loan but not my brokerage accounts (although I probably wouldn’t have linked it anyway).

SR: Hate to call you out but you seem to be making a few assumption on Mint, and already hating on them before even looking at them. I totally agree with you that “password” as a bug is pretty stupid, and makes you wonder if they have any other explotable bugs, but I read through your arguments and was agreeing with them untill I read the part where you said you haven’t even visited mint’s site.

In your first post, you said that reading privacy policy and terms and condition is important, since your concern is that they’ll mine your personal information, and I totally agree. In your second post you made that point again, but you stated again you haven’t review their privacy policy, and you won’t because the site turns you off.

Whenever I personally use a website, I always read their privacy policy and terms and condition carefully. Mint’s first line in their policy states that they won’t ever sell or rent my personal information. If they at least comply with that then I’m happy enough. At least they’re not actively trying to screw me over (security holes, if any, aside. heh).

Seems pretty silly to me for you to be bagging on them before even visiting the site. You’re making all these statements about them mining people’s information before you even use their service. Of course, you’re not comfortable with using their service, that’s totally understandable. But maybe at least read through the site before you start hating on it? Makes the argument much more valid.

I’m going to echo JG’s comments. People shouldn’t downplay risk into using online tools, whether you’re using aggregators like this, or giving out your CC information while you’re making purchases (regardless if you’re protected under law or by bank). Like I said, whenever I use anything remotely close to financial transaction online, I read a site’s privacy policy and terms and condition carefully. There’s a few clause in mint that makes me cringe, but they’re the standard business stuff that I’ve read elsewhere and quite frankly, in my own bank too (gotta cover their liability, after alll). So to protect my own, I take precautions.

You’ll never seen me linking my retirement accounts or brokerage accounts to unestablished companies. That’s where the majority of egg is at, since you can actually make transfers with the password to those account (although my brokerage has 2ndary trading passwords).

I’ve gotten my identity stolen before, and it was no fun to clear that up. Some clown opened up a CC in my name, and I believe I’m fairly careful with my personal information. I noticed this when I saw some strange charges on an account I haven’t used in a long time from a local community bank (through my account aggregators), and then signed up for credit monitoring just to be sure.. and sure enough, a new CC account was open at this community bank. Took me a week or two just to clear it up. I can only imagine if it was worse and I didn’t detect it earlier, as I’ve read plenty of horror stories. I was able to detect this early due to using yodlee, but of course you can also argue that using these aggregators made me more vunlerable.

Still, I think people should be proactive about their own privacy and financial information security. Whenever you use a website or do business with a company, you should always read about how they handle your information (and at least visit their site before making assumptions). Of course that doesn’t mean a company can be lax about their practices, but as with your own financial welfare, no one can judge your situation better, so its up to you to see how much you’re comfortable with in regards to online banking and other similar practies.