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Interesting perspective because my #1 requirement is that no 3rd party gets financial login credentials at all. I'm willing to do CSVs in order to not compromise on security, although the experience most certainly is bad.

Interesting that you're this paranoid, but yet you trust banks.

There’s a massive difference between trusting banks (insured, backed by the state, etc) and trusting some random SaaS/web app you saw 10 minutes ago with access to said banks.

Oh it's "random" app, and here this time I figured we were talking about a reputable one that has PCI-DSS compliance like Quicken. My bad.

Sure, if you just trust some random Chrome extension from a random individual developer, you're absolutely setting yourself up for trouble when they hack your shit. But to wholesale dismiss all apps when there are actual legal protections in place that permit these businesses?

At least in the US, you don't have to trust a bank. You just trust the FDIC.

Also, what a glaring false dichotomy.

My point wasn’t necessarily creating a false dichotomy, since I was highlighting the inconsistency in the argument about trusting banks but dismissing reputable third-party apps on the whole. Does this person distrust consumer protections set up to allow for such tools to exist in the first place?

So to make "false dichotomy" stick, you going to need to assert that if Quicken were breached and this lead to my Schwab account being accessed by a bad actor, I actually am shit out of luck. Will you do that?

This is a huge waste of time and not worth it. The amount of hours you spend fixing errors manually vs the small risk your info gets out I don't think is worth it.

Is it a small risk? The track record of information security with corporations is dreadful and brokerage login details are about the most expensive things one could have stolen.

Completely disagree. Weighing risk vs reward the risk is that my identity gets stolen while the reward is that I don't have to login to my accounts and enter information manually.

At some point I suspect every person on the planet will have experienced a data exposure event and the question will switch from: have you ever had your info leaked?, when was the last time your info was leaked? It's not a small risk.

The amount of work you'd have to do to correct a stolen identity is far less than the amount of work to log in to 10 accounts periodically,dump the data, format it, import it, and fix any issues

A lot of brokers offer read-only logins/API keys for these cases. I still heavily agree with your general sentiment - purchasing power is among the most valuable information to businesses and advertisers.

> I am not willing to manually navigate a dozen banks' broken UIs to find their "download CSV"

> My #2 requirement (a close second) is that the application must be running on my local PC. I will never accept a cloud-based web-app

You're lucky you don't live in the EU since well then you are straight out of luck since the bank APIs are only available to commercial entities thus the software generally is in the cloud and costs money.

Is it illegal for banks to provide private customers personal API access?

I don't think it is illegal at all. Banks just don't want to offer such features.

Not that I know of, but I've never seen one that does. And it's not like API access for company accounts is common - what the EU regulation requires, which is the only thing most babks support now, is that anyone can access their own accounts through a licensed account information provider.

Under the "open banking" scheme, not even massive companies can get API access to their own accounts. It only requires banks to give service providers access that allows their customers to essentially OAuth login into those services with their bank accounts. There is no "I just want my own account" API, only the general one.

And becoming a licensed provider is insanely hard because it's assumed you'll be actively managing millions of euros for tens of thousands of customers, when in reality, all you want is read-only access to one or a few affiliated accounts.

I use one that has public API, fio.cz in Czechia. There are surely others...

Banks in Germany offer access to consumers via the HBCI standard. Not sure about the rest of the EU.

This sounds illegal and against what GDPR stands for.

Why is accessing your own banking data through a standard against what GDPR stands for? GDPR has a right to data portability.

I miss interpreted. I thought someone else can gain access to consumer data.

Banks in Germany provide it because of EU regulation.

https://www.digiteal.eu/open-banking-apis-all-you-need-to-kn...

Those regulations are about sharing via trusted third parties, not direct to users.

some similar tools offer a way to parse the PDF files provided by your bank and import it. I wish we had something similar here to do that

fio.cz has one - https://www.fio.cz/bank-services/internetbanking-api

Obviously the UK is not the EU... but Starling Bank offer an API that you can use to access your personal bank account. I'm sure Monzo and other neo-banks offer similar functionality.

Open Banking predates Brexit, so lots of that stuff got carried over into the Brave New World.

Banks generally support HBCI standard (in Central/Western Europe)

Thats why using apps like Outbank, that automatically aggregate all your bank accounts data work like a charm in my experience.

> […] and store your credentials.

And doing so violates the terms of service with many banks:

> You agree that you will not authorize a third party to use the Service or share your credentials with a third party to use the Service on your behalf except in legally authorized situations such as legal guardianship or pursuant to a power of attorney.

* https://www.bankofamerica.com/online-banking/service-agreeme...

I stopped using services like Coinbase that force you into Plaid. My final straw was getting a notification that I had to relink my accounts because I had changed my bank's password.

The banks are just as to blame. I'd love some basic non-SMS 2FA as a starting point, but sadly my bank is only the #6 largest in the US so they don't have the budget for it.

Oddly, BofA actually has mechanisms in place to allow non-credential sharing access to external services. Try linking a paypal account and you'll get a prompt from a Bank of America system that allows paypal to access all your banking details.

I’m sure that legalese is there for the event that you link a third party service and it empties your account.

You’re a member of a dozen banks!?!

You have dozens of banks?

is there a zapier for integrations that could be used

# Bank of America (BofA)

BofA Login https://www.bankofamerica.com/

1. Log in to your account.

2. Go to "Activity" or "Statements".

3. Select the account and time range.

4. Click "Download" and choose "CSV". Yes

--

# Chase Chase Login

1. Log in to your Chase account.

2. Navigate to "Statements & Documents".

3. Choose the account and statement period.

4. Click "Download" and select "CSV". Yes

--

# Wells Fargo Wells Fargo Login

1. Log in to your account.

2. Go to "Account Activity".

3. Select "Download Account Activity".

4. Choose "CSV" and specify the time period. Yes

# Citibank Citibank Login

1. Log in to your account.

2. Go to "Statements".

3. Choose the time period and format.

4. Select "Download" in "CSV". Yes

# Capital One Capital One Login

1. Log in to your account.

2. Navigate to the "Account Activity".

3. Select the time period and click "Download".

4. Choose "CSV". Yes

REP-EDIT:

You can literally just ask bot for api docs to access info - then gimme a python for such:

https://i.imgur.com/P9UgZ98.png

>>"..evaluate the docs for each API and give me the most straight-forward python to connect which prompts me for which fin inst - with a menu for inputs. define an .env with the reqs fin inst fields i'd need to add.. but use the vars in the script... define in mermaid and swim."..

https://i.imgur.com/SpsyfI5.png

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

--

Basically, the semantic web is near.

Hopefully soon there will be a dictionary and a thesaurus of quippets {AI-Bot-like snippets that you call like legos to walk through a Warren (rabbits hole)

==-->

"Give me a panel that [does complex output] using [random inputs] and [other relationships] and give put that as "oligarchs" and give me relevant tables for relationships between the [elements]

(I like to add in "from this .git repo" and I also like to have them do autistically-obsessive logging.)

The problem is that I have so many logging iterations I get lost...

What I NEED is an AI co-AIHDHD-Pilot -- that watches all mY iterations and birdwalking through a problem, curiosity, muse, failure, success - -and give me a Charlie Day Version of my thought process

https://i.imgur.com/4QBjOCZ.jpeg