Report: Mint Considers Selling Anonymized Data from Its Users | Hacker News Reader

Report: Mint Considers Selling Anonymized Data from Its Users

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23 pointstortilla22 comments

I just canceled my account. I am afraid that even though they anonymize the data, personal details may still be present. When AOL accidentally released their "anonymized" search data, the same thing happened.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_scandal

Yah I'm a bit nervous. But doesn't a third party company handle all the identifiable details anyways?

I don't really give a hoot if other people know how much I spend on Zipcar or groceries.

Do they delete your data when you cancel your account?

My tutorial on de-anonymizing data published by Lendingclub might be useful: http://33bits.org/2008/11/12/57/

That's the problem with "Free": you might end up being the one who pays for it.

I love mint and would much, much rather pay a monthly fee for it than have them sell information about me, even anonymized information.

A paid service would end up selling their data eventually too. Its too valuable stream of revenue to ignore.

The difference is that a paid service can survive without selling something. With a free service that isn't offered by a charity, they need to generate revenue at some point. You just have to figure out what they're going to sell.

My guess is that Mint won't really do this. But it's an important risk; I'd feel way better about them having my data if someone out there was paying $5/month to use Mint.

Data point: I use mint.com. This morning I awoke to three text messages, all telling me in one spammy way or another that I could get a "cash advance". All three messages were from different numbers, and one of them was from a number that has only ever sent me my Mint.com alerts.

Stephen here at Mint.com. Mint does not send those types of alerts. We do use a third party to deliver our text alerts via all the carriers. I'd really like to learn more about these text messages about a "cash advance" so please email me at smann at mint dot com so I can research. Thank you.

I'm sorry, but this should come as absolutely no surprise. When you give information about yourself to companies, the temptation is going to be very great to figure out how to monetize it. Anybody here should certainly know that going in.

We regularly hear about the successful de-anonymization of anonymized data (netflix, etc), so this doesn't fill me with confidence about using Mint. Other than posting a bond (which a startup probably won't have the money to do), is there a way to robustly signal that this kind of thing won't be done by your startup?

The founders could put up their stock as a guarantee against it.

(edit) That's risky an self-limiting, on second thought. The investors would never agree to the same, and it would not apply in the case of a sale of the company.

Investors might agree to it, if it was plausible that it increased the value of the shares. And such a lien is common on other kinds of property, so I don't know that there's anything different about this in principle. I kinda like the idea.

Ahh. Reminded me to cancel my account. Thanks!

Mostly just because I don't use it...it's interesting, but not really very useful to me. I already know I spend too much on food!

This is wrong. wrong, wrong, wrong... If I were running mint, I'd shut it down before voilating my users' privacy like this. I'd rather return to the machine than do this.

It's why I don't want venture capital. What mint is doing makes me feel dirty. Thank goodness I never created a mint.com account.

Although it doesn't look as good as Mint, I much prefer Yodlee to Mint.com

I use both Yodlee and Mint, but i much prefer the UI of mint. May I ask why do you prefer Yodlee?

Also, note that Mint uses Yodlee in the back end.

Has nobody tried Wesabe? They seem to be very much up front about what kind of information they aggregate and for what. Also, they don't take payments to recommend particular services. I like them, but don't use this kind of website extensively because my local bank operates in the middle ages.

I've used Wesabe, and yes, I like the service. It is more of a community built around financial management than just a financial management tool.

Depending on what you want out of the app, you might also consider Buxfer. My wife and I love it. $21/yr well spent. I even like it better than Quicken or Money.

Don't banks and credit institutions already do this?

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