Mint Wins TechCrunch40 $50,000 Award | Hacker News Reader

Mint Wins TechCrunch40 $50,000 Award

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20 pointsjkopelman15 comments

Just curious: How many of you are willing to give your bank passwords to Mint.com? I'm still scared to give out my most important credentials to a 3rd party. Maybe I'm paranoid.

Apparently many people gave their information to Wesabe (http://www.wesabe.com), which is a direct Mint competitor.

They are a little different.

With Wesabe you download a desktop app, put you bank credentials into that, and then the desktop app uploads your data to the Wesabe site. With Mint you give their webapp your bank credentials and they store them on their server.

http://mint.com/safe.html

http://www.wesabe.com/page/security

A big selling point for Wesabe is just that - they never store your banking credentials.

Yeah I think I'd still prefer a desktop application for that.

I actually stand in line to cash cheques instead of using the ATM because I'm afraid it'll mess something up somehow.

You're saying you're more comfortable giving your bank passwords to an internet enabled desktop application than a web app? or that you would just rather type your information in yourself, in Quicken or something?

2nd choice.

I'm still scared to give out my most important credentials to a 3rd party. Maybe I'm paranoid.

I'm with you, and no, it's not paranoia, especially when stories like this (also on the news.yc front page right now) are still making news: http://www.venturecake.com/layered-technologies-hacked/

From the article:

Major US hosting company Layered Technologies have been hacked. Credentials for 5-6000 hosted accounts - and the data stored in them, including customer details in web stores - have been compromised.

I hope Mint doesn't used Layered for their hosting.

Few days(?) ago Ameritrade found out they've been trojaned for a while and hackers stole all the customer info.

I'm not saying Mint is screwed but current phisihing scams and security lapses have people scared. Financial sites will develop a stigma that many people have when you ask them to 'install' something on their machines.

Mint has obviously thought this out. They use yodlee, which provides bank/credit interaction services and is secure. Yodlee has your information and Mint only passes your info to it, it is never stored on Mint's servers.

If your bank has a liability agreement with Yodlee, you're probably ok in the event of a data theft or break-in.

But if not, your bank might not do anything for you, because in their eyes, it's your fault for trusting an unauthorized (to them) third party.

will NEVER be main stream. too many people are too scared to give out their most sensitive information over the web, to be used for dog knows what. i wish them luck.

That argument also implies online banking will never be mainstream.

Once people realize that online banking makes life automated, they'll see how much MORE secure it can.

Bank of America has an excellent online suite. It can grab other banks information, automatically make monthly payments, and can automatically categorize certain purchases.

The security comes from getting rid of an older and better established method of low tech identify theft: I elect to stop paper statements from every service and bill I use. No more mailbox snoops.

The difference being that the bank already has your information. The more parties that have your information the greater the chance of a leak.

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