Financial site Mint.com releases iPhone app

Mint.com should worry everyone. Number one, they are screen scraping your data from your bank or credit union. Which, as described above, is not the most secure or reliable method to pull data. Additionally, there is no way they are not storing your credentials on their servers. Which is a huge risk despite the steps they take to prevent fraud.

The other issue I have is that mint.com is not held to the same regulatory fire that FIs are held to. For instance, Mint.com doesn't have to worry about multi-factor authentication. That was put in place to enhance security and mint.com isn't held to the same level of accountability.

The main issue I have with Mint.com is their business model. They are very good at presenting themselves as having consumer's best interest at heart. That very well might be the case, but the bottom line is they are a well funded company who will need to find a way to take advantage of their user base to make money. Which is what the intention of their investors is. So mint.com either get's acquired and your information now belongs to someone else. Or they continue pushing offers to you from other FI's (i.e. join HSBC for a better rate). Which by the way, mint.com gets paid if you take them up on that offer. So how can they have your best interest at heart while simultaneously encouraging you to bank at a different institution? I would love to hear Aaron's response to this.

Given the fears I raised in the comments section earlier, I felt I should come back and update with new information: after speaking with several citibank reps, I am convinced that my earlier concerns about violating my TOS are unfounded. They told me sharing my login info is a judgement call on my part, but that the sharing itself would not restrict my protections against fraud (unless of course the breach was proved to be directly related to Mint.com).

There's something about "completely free" and "hooks right into your bank accounts" that scares the crap out of me. No thanks.

I've been thinking about going freelance, and a system like this would be a great way for me to categorize expenses.

God, I wish they supported banks in Germany...

I just do not see the wisdom in involving a third party into your financial matters out of "convenience."

You have an iPhone, that should be plenty convenient:

- Use your Calendar app to plan/track payments.
- Use Safari to check your transactions & balances online.
- Use the handy Phone feature to call the automated account line.

And people seriously wonder why they become victims of fraud...

Mint.com is just using Yodlee as their backend. Yodlee is also free and is more feature rich than Mint is. I prefer them over Mint.com.

Just so that you know, there shouldn't be any legal or TOS issues using either of them as Bank of America uses Yodlee (portfolio services). I don't see banks using services from companies that violate their terms.

Does anyone know of any UK equivalents?

I used Mint for a while until I learned that I was violating my bank and credit card's TOS by providing Mint with my credentials. If you violate the terms, you are not legally afforded the same level of protection if someone gains unauthorized access to your account. For example, I had an unauthorized withdrawal of $2500 last year (before I used Mint), and one of the questions they asked me was "Have you given your username, password, or PIN to anyone?" The answer was no, but had it been yes, I suspect I wouldn't have been entitled to protection on that amount.

I don't doubt that Mint is secure with their info, but it's worth noting that they obtain their data by screen scraping, which is very sketch. Why don't they have access via XML or something authorized?

If the open up their service to let you upload statement PDF files or CSVs, and parse those, I might reconsider using their service.

For anyone familiar with Mint or services like it: What assurances do we have, as end users, that our information (bank account numbers, credit card numbers) isn't being used in bad ways? I mean, isn't this risky at all?


(Sorry for the double post...Didn't mean to originally post it as a reply...)