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Comment by jaden | Hacker News Reader

It's encouraging to see Plaid making this level of effort to be accurate. It seems like it could be a viable alternative to Mint using something like https://github.com/yyx990803/build-your-own-mint (written by the author of Vue.js).

It's scary to think what would happen if one of these services (Mint, Personal Capital, Plaid) had a backend data breach. If they can log in to your financial sites, a breach would mean the attacker would be able to as well.

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Isn't it more scary to think how many people are so cavalier with sharing their online banking credentials with a third-party app like Plaid?

I don't think enough people realize that when you authenticate with Plaid, even for apps that don't provide "Mint-like" functionality and have no need for your transaction history, you're giving that developer permission to pull your transaction history, personal information, account balance, etc without any additional permission at anytime.

"I was surprised the app I gave my banking credentials could read my transactions" seems like a weird complaint, considering there's not that much else legitimate you can do with them. I have concerns about Plaid/Mint/etc. being breached. Less so about the access they have.

It's not a weird complaint at all when it's being presented purely as a tool to facilitate money transfer in/out of your bank account.

If I'm trusting an app to literally take my money, them having access to transaction data should hardly be shocking.

You're giving Plaid and your average user way too much credit.

If the inherit trust is so obvious, then why would Plaid not include a very common step in authentication flows like FB and Google to explicitly tell users what they are agreeing to share with XYZ developer before submitting their credentials (which may be just a bank account number, but might also be transaction history, personal information, account balance, etc.)? They've purposefully omitted this step because conversion would almost certainly tank.

I've been playing around with Plaid the past few days and they very clearly list the permissions during authentication:

https://i.imgur.com/xNPTIzy.png

They even link to a dashboard that displays all the information you are sharing with developers:

https://my-sandbox.plaid.com/account

That said, I agree that the average user won't realize the implications. Additionally, revocation/deletion of the data requires emailing them.

I'm not sure I follow nor agree. When I go buy something at Target, they take my money but I in no way expect that Target would then be able to see my bank account balance nor all of my transaction history at every other place I shop.

"I'm swiping my card" versus "I'm entering my banking username/password" are very different authentication methods.

What does the authentication method have to do with anything? You stated that if an app "takes your money", then you expect it to have unfettered access to all of your financials? That's absurd, regardless of what information you put in.

If I give a valet the keys to my car, it is very clearly for them to drive it to and from a parking space, nothing else. It is not blanket approval for them to go take it on a joyride through the city. To defend them by saying "well you gave them the keys, what did you expect?" would be similarly absurd as defending Plaid et al.

And yet, you are missing simple distinctions between authorization and authentication. You can authenticate with a separate identity provider. Every site that uses google login does that. They don't get access to your google account. You can also authorize specific things in your google account. Some apps do that too, and they get restricted access to a folder in google drive for example. Plaid doesn't follow any of these patterns. Instead, they show you a log in screen that looks like your bank's login (same colours and everything), only that you are sending your credentials to plaid. This is outright deception.

This happen more often than most people realize.

Especially in the accounting tech space. Take a look at HubDoc (which Xero accounting acquired for ~70m) and their practices of asking accountants to share their clients login credentials + challenge questions to every online service they want "automated" instead of using OAuth. Their FAQ even encourages this "Hubdoc will have all of the information it needs to connect and fetch your documents": https://support.hubdoc.com/hc/en-us/articles/360007260052-Wh...

As for bank feeds, no one has solved this the right way. Not even Plaid. Scrapers are not the answer. Maybe open banking standards like already happening in Commonwealth countries? Or a dropbox like app that lives on the user's machine and that does all the scraping without giving away the login credentials to other actors.

> If they can log in to your financial sites, a breach would mean the attacker would be able to as well.

As an added bonus, banks may disclaim liability because you shared your credentials with a third party.

That's a good (although bad for the consumer) point. Are you aware of any examples of this happening?

Reading my terms of service I can see my bank explicitly having forbidden the sharing of credentials.

Not sure if there ever was a case they used this clause, though.

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