Safe enough for your money: Mint.com and other personal finance sites keep it real
Filed under: Banks, Simplification, Technology
Mint.com is a personal finance site which provides the ability for you to link together all of the parts of your financial life. In order for the service to work you need to provide all of your banking passwords and account numbers to Mint so that it can work all of its behind the scenes magic. With a treasure trove of financial information like this sitting in one place, you'll want to be sure that your information is secure. Ryan Taylor of Money Millionaire Habits did just that and has provided a simple rundown of the security features utilized by Mint.com to protect your money.First off, it is important to note that you don't make any transactions from inside Mint, which affords solace to some wary users. The most impressive piece of information about Mint.com's security is that the back end that runs Mint, called Yodlee, is also used by many of the top banks in the industry. All of these precautions should combine to give most users the same sense of security when using Mint.com to manage their personal finances as they have with their own bank.
Even though I am part of the younger generation which seems at time to jump on new technology, I have been hesitant to start using any of these third party online budgeting systems mainly due to security. Thankfully, it appears that my fears were unfounded and Mint.com appears to be using good policies and software to safeguard users' information and money. Stay tuned, in the near future I'll be looking into the security behind a Mint.com competitor, Wesabe.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-09-2008 @ 6:13PM
Lin said...
I like Mint.com
I have been with them since day 1
http://moneyliving.blogspot.com
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7-15-2008 @ 2:05PM
Allese said...
Hi Matt,
My name is Allese and I work at Wesabe (wesabe.com). Thanks much for the mention!
Wesabe is a lot like Mint (a great site) in that we both provide easy ways to track your money online. However, Wesabe combines it's money management tool with a community of smart, supportive people sharing advice and ideas with each other to help everyone get more value for their money.
Security, of course, is a key concern as well as an issue that Wesabe is quite obsessive about. You noted that even though you our of the “mindless security generation”, it’s an issue that you’re quite wary of. Well, you’ll be happy to hear that Wesabe was built for people like you. Because Wesabe was the first in the online personal finance tool space, the majority of potential users were very hesitant if not completely resistant to sharing sensitive data on the web. Wesabe thus built three different ways for members to upload their bank data, none of which require one's username and password. Instead of entering sensitive information into a website, Wesabe created software that keeps ones bank credentials on their personal hard drive and uploads their data (stripped of any personal identifiers) onto the website. This enabled members to see all their bank/credit accounts in one place and categorize, “tag” their purchases while feeling completely secure.
Over time however, members saw that we were transparent and trustworthy and started asking for a more automated method to upload their transaction data. So, we launched a fourth way to upload your data, requiring one's username and password, which we call the automatic uploader. The simplest and quickest of our methods, it’s become our most popular uploading option. Still, members have the ability to choose a method that corresponds to their comfort level. I'd love to connect you with our CEO Marc Hedlund to chat more about security and Wesabe in general. If you're interested drop me a line at allese@wesabe.com.
Also, you might be interested in reading our Data of Bill of Rights https://www.wesabe.com/page/securityhttps://www.wesabe.com/page/security , our pledge to our members security.
Thanks again for the mention of us and please feel free to email me with any questions!!
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