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Comment by procinct | Hacker News Reader

How does Quicken sync transactions without a bank API? Do you have to give it your bank credentials so it can scrape the site?

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Yes, that is one of the ways Quicken scrapes information.

The "bank API" is actually OFX, it's a protocol banks use to send each other data. I'm currently working on trying to get OFX support in My Budget. (I'm the author of the Github project).

It seems insane that people would be okay with their bank credentials being stored in plaintext.

I signed up for a budgeting service that claimed real time transaction sync and immediately unsubscribed when I realised it was planning to do so by scraping.

Quicken at least claims to store the credentials locally and encrypted. How well it does this I don't know of course, but I consider it infinitely better than any online service, which is why I still use it despite the fact that it manages the impressive feat of being so slow that a web-based service would probably be faster in terms of UI performance.

People give their passwords to Mint, and I totally don't understand that.

The banks in the US won't cooperate, according to everyone I've heard stories from who are trying to break into, or have broken into, this space.

That’s still not a good reason to give your bank credentials and allow them to be stored in plain text. At that point if it’s your only option you just don’t do it.

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