[ale] Mint.com

[Lightner, Jeff]

Putting all your eggs in one basket seems like a good idea until the
basket gets dropped.  

There is a reason why organizations that can afford it have multiple
data centers and the ones that can't might pay to have an offsite DR
location.  There's also a reason why some companies take major hits
because they DON'T do either.

You'd have to look long and hard at all agreements, terms and
conditions.   Most banks and financial institutions make them very one
sided and I'd be surprised if Mint didn't as well.   

A couple of nice examples:
1)  If you do a stop payment on a check your bank explicitly states on
the form that they don't actually guarantee to stop the payment and
you're still liable if they pay it despite the existence of the stop
payment.

2)  Most direct deposit forms you sign with an employer have clauses
allowing the employer to put money in AND TAKE MONEY OUT of your
account.  The latter is ostensibly for "corrections" (e.g. they
deposited too much) but seldom explicitly limit that or define what
"corrections" are allowed.     Direct Deposit agreements usually have no
expiration date or termination clause so could actually be used against
you long after you'd left a job.
I once heard of an IT contractor who had his agency remove all the money
they had paid him over several months after he quit - giving the excuse
he hadn't turned in time sheets.  One wonders why they would have paid
him in the first place.  

Funny though - I had the idea to setup something like this long before
CheckFree existed but decided most people would be slightly too paranoid
to do it.  CheckFree proved me wrong. :-)


-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
Matty
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 3:12 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
Subject: [ale] Mint.com

Anyone on the list using mint.com?

http://www.mint.com

Their service looks awesome (and the price tag can't be beat), but I'm
having a hard time overcoming the security implications of letting
them access the financial institutions I use. Curious what others on
the list think.

- Ryan
--
http://prefetch.net
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