Author Topic: Why do you trust Mint?  (Read 9974 times)

campath

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Why do you trust Mint?
« on: February 24, 2015, 11:11:50 AM »
Just wondering why someone would let a website have access to all of their banking and credit card information? Given the recent high profile website breaches, does it not scare you that all of your information is available at one location?

When Target was hacked, you might have to worry about getting 1 or 2 credit cards replaced but if Mint is hacked, its all of your financial information. It just suprises me that people are so trusting and ready to hand over all of their passwords to a third party.

johnny847

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2015, 11:12:30 AM »
I don't.

epipenguin

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2015, 11:17:38 AM »
Because they're owned by Intuit. Intuit already has all my tax information in Turbotax online. And all my business information in Quickbooks online. So I am well and truly screwed if they are hacked. THEY are well and truly screwed if they are hacked because their entire business model revolves around secure financial data.

But what has happened when someone has cloned or hacked my credit card before? The credit card company notices weird stuff and does a fraud alert. Then they call me up, we figure out which charges were fraudulent, and so far have refunded me the money. My experience to this point is that I've had much worse luck with credit card skimming at restaurants and gas stations than at Mint. Not that it can't happen, of course, but even with the website breaches that have been publicized, where is the publicity about people losing thousands from their Target card being hacked? I don't see it.

RunHappy

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #3 on: February 24, 2015, 11:18:55 AM »
should you trust mint:

http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/should-you-trust-mint-com/

given that the only way to be REALLY secure is to not use any credit cards, not have any bank accounts, do not take out any loans, and basically live a cash existence.

There are things the consumer can do, like using strong passphrases (not passwords), multi-factor authentication, and updating their information on a regular basis.


Nothlit

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #4 on: February 24, 2015, 11:20:05 AM »
I don't trust Mint either. The terms of service of all of my banking accounts include clauses that indicate I am liable if I give my password to a third party which ends up resulting in a breach of my account. I did not see anything in Mint's terms of service that indicated they would take on that liability. So if I use Mint and they are breached and my money is stolen, the burden lies solely on me to recover the funds. Not a position I want to be in.

Some banks offer separate "read-only" account passwords for specifically this purpose. If all my banks did that, I'd have no reservations with using Mint.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2015, 11:22:03 AM by Nothlit »

johnny847

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #5 on: February 24, 2015, 11:22:52 AM »
Some banks offer separate "read-only" account passwords for specifically this purpose. If all my banks did that, I'd have no reservations with using Mint.
Out of curiosity, which banks are these?

kudy

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #6 on: February 24, 2015, 11:36:36 AM »
I know Capital One 360 has "read only" account access - I also wish all of my banks had this feature.

terran

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #7 on: February 24, 2015, 11:40:32 AM »

frugaliknowit

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #8 on: February 24, 2015, 05:54:30 PM »
I don't and won't use it.  Giving your passwords to a 3rd party is a license for your account providers to screw you.  I post everything to Excel

Chrissy

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #9 on: February 24, 2015, 06:12:27 PM »
I trust it because my fiance is a software developer who assures me Mint is double encrypted, and that hacking will not be an issue.  He used the program himself a few years ago, but now has a philosophical problem with Intuit.

johnny847

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #10 on: February 24, 2015, 06:38:31 PM »
I trust it because my fiance is a software developer who assures me Mint is double encrypted, and that hacking will not be an issue.  He used the program himself a few years ago, but now has a philosophical problem with Intuit.
I understand cryptography, and assuming that Mint correctly implements what they say they implement on their security page, security should not be an issue.

Counterpoint: Look at Heartbleed. This was a bug in the OpenSSL (one library that implements SSL) that was discovered just last year. SSL is what is responsible for the https aspect of your connection to a website, and will encrypt your communications. Numerous important websites, such as Google's services including Gmail, Yahoo, American Funds, USAA, Dropbox, Venmo, etc. were affected.

Any cryptographic solution today should not be able to to broken by a brute force attack. Security breaches can occur for many reasons, but the theoretical math behind the security is never in question. Two common vulnerabilities are implementation errors or human factors (such as phishing for passwords).


But honestly, the security concern is not as big as the concern that Nothlit raised:
I don't trust Mint either. The terms of service of all of my banking accounts include clauses that indicate I am liable if I give my password to a third party which ends up resulting in a breach of my account. I did not see anything in Mint's terms of service that indicated they would take on that liability. So if I use Mint and they are breached and my money is stolen, the burden lies solely on me to recover the funds. Not a position I want to be in.

Some banks offer separate "read-only" account passwords for specifically this purpose. If all my banks did that, I'd have no reservations with using Mint.

oldfierm

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #11 on: February 25, 2015, 09:59:59 AM »
It's not that I particularly trust mint, I just have seen my fair share of "identity theft" in my previous jobs and in my personal experience, and I've never seen anyone have issues due to a site like mint.  Of the perhaps 50 cases of identity theft-type situations I've seen, all were either:

1) weird credit card charges that the credit card company caught right away and refunded; or
2) sadly, a family member who is in a bad financial place using a loved one's SSN to apply for utilities, credit cards, etc.
3) one case where a criminal was arrested, gave someone else's social, and then was later wanted by the feds, so they ended up putting out a warrant for the wrong person.   

That's it, 100% of what I've seen.  I doubt those one-time credit card charges came from mint, but even if they did, I've never seen a case where the credit card company didn't deal with it and refund it right away.  The really bad ones are the family members, because it's harder to catch, usually ends up on your credit report, and the only way to really deal with it is to report your mother (yes, it's usually their mother) to the police.   

jrmrjnck

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #12 on: February 25, 2015, 11:53:12 AM »
Some banks offer separate "read-only" account passwords for specifically this purpose. If all my banks did that, I'd have no reservations with using Mint.
Out of curiosity, which banks are these?

Wells Fargo supports view-only guest accounts.

Blonde Lawyer

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #13 on: February 25, 2015, 11:55:17 AM »
The benefit outweighs the risk to me.  If they get hacked it is going to be large scale and tons of people will be in the same boat and something will have to be done about it.  If someone is really hacking in to steal one person's identity the chance that it will be me is about as good as winning the lottery.  I monitor my accounts and suspect I would catch suspicious activity quickly, notify my bank and get a hold put on it.

Thegoblinchief

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #14 on: February 25, 2015, 03:31:38 PM »
I don't particularly care about Mint one way or another, because I have zero need for their service. Passive spending tracking accomplishes very little.

Blonde Lawyer

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #15 on: February 25, 2015, 03:50:23 PM »
I don't particularly care about Mint one way or another, because I have zero need for their service. Passive spending tracking accomplishes very little.

It does more than that.  It tracks your income, investments, networth, etc.  I find it an easy way to monitor all of my accounts (including income accounts) with one log-in.  It also emails me with unusual spending alerts.  I'm much more likely to catch fraud on one of my accounts that way. 

jopiquant

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #16 on: February 25, 2015, 03:53:04 PM »
I don't, but for another reason entirely - we don't want the US government spying on our financial information through Mint because of data stored on servers in the US. I closed our account a while back and am considering opening a personal finance account through Wave, which is here in Canada, with data on servers in Canada.

Thegoblinchief

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #17 on: February 25, 2015, 04:05:34 PM »
I don't particularly care about Mint one way or another, because I have zero need for their service. Passive spending tracking accomplishes very little.

It does more than that.  It tracks your income, investments, networth, etc.  I find it an easy way to monitor all of my accounts (including income accounts) with one log-in.  It also emails me with unusual spending alerts.  I'm much more likely to catch fraud on one of my accounts that way.

Still has zero use for me. If you have so many accounts that the ONLY way you'd check on them is with an aggregator, simplify.

Net worth is easy to track in a spreadsheet, and there's very few reasons to track it on more frequency than yearly, as a preliminary exercise before rebalancing (if needed) your AA. I only do it quarterly because I'm a blogger.

I don't understand why so many around here needlessly complicate their financial lives.

Syonyk

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #18 on: February 25, 2015, 04:39:48 PM »
1. Intuit has my historical tax data for the last few years anyway.  TurboTax.  Yes, I can do my own taxes.  Yes, it's easier and I get more back with some small business costs with them.  *shrug*  Facepunch away.
2. I can easily import data from most places into TurboTax with Mint.
3. Their company is literally done as a company if they suffer a big data breech.  And, if so, I will likely be aware of it quickly and can change passwords before an attacker gets to my accounts.

As for a lot of accounts, some people just end up there.  Various 401ks to track, Betterment, Lending Club, a few different banks for different reasons (I have one for local stuff, one for long term savings, and FDIC insurance is per account, not per person), then a few CCs between my wife & I to optimize based on what we're spending money on.  One for groceries/gas, unless another one has better cash back on gas, etc.

arebelspy

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Re: Why do you trust Mint?
« Reply #19 on: February 28, 2015, 08:37:11 AM »
Passive spending tracking accomplishes very little.
I don't understand why so many around here needlessly complicate their financial lives.

You understand that not everyone has the same opinions and use scenarios as you, yes?

Mint makes my financial life drastically easier, and passive spending tracking is the only form of financial data I need/use (budgets, on the other hand, I feel accomplish very little, but I recognize that for some people they're quite useful).  I don't use it to track net worth.  I'm sure some do though, and that's fine.

Absolute sentences declared as if they were facts typically accomplish very little in a discussion.  :)

As for why do you trust Mint, we've had many discussions on if you can trust Mint or not:
http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/feeling-queasy-about-opening-mint-com-account/
http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/mint-com-security-concerns/
http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/ask-a-mustachian/newbie-question-mint-com-safe/
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