How do you trust Mint?

[Anonymous]

I see there are a lot of people on here who use, and endorse Mint.com.

I've taken a look, and am intrigued... but honestly, how can you trust any website with passwords and total access to all of your money?
Even if Intuit is the money upstanding and honest company, all it would take is 1 breach from 1 hacker to compromise everything, no?

Am I missing something? Because I can't bring myself to put that much at risk, for a little bit of convenience.

[Anonymous]

I've always wondered the same thing and for that reason have never tried Mint.

[Anonymous]

I read a number of reviews and all of them noted its security. The main point is that even if someone could get into your mint.com account, they can't actually move money around or get money out of your account. But there's always the possibility of hackers, even at your own bank's website.

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

Aaron Patzer, from Mint.com, said the site protects user names and passwords with the same level of security as a financial institution. Specifically, none of that information is accessible on the site and no personal identifying information other than your e-mail is linked to your account, meaning someone who had your Mint.com log-in couldn’t access your bank account information.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2344432,00.asp

Understandably, whenever you use an account aggregation site like this one, it's good to know what kind of security is behind it. Mint.com uses bank-grade security, which means it doesn't even have access to what you type. From the Mint interface, you can't initiate transfers of money or payouts of any kind, which means no one else could either.

[Anonymous]

Same way I trust the bank. I have no reason to believe that someone who works at Mint is less honest than someone who works for my bank, and by that I mean the subcontractor that no doubt handles all of the electronic information for the bank. Plus, you can't use Mint to transfer money. You are a t greater risk using your credit card at a restaurant.

[Anonymous]

It is convenient. People turn off their brains for convenience. I don't care about security issues. That is not my first thought. Why would I give one company so much personal information? I wouldn't.

[Anonymous]

I check mint.com almost every day, usually multiple times a day. I would notice if there was a strange charge or whatnot. It is actually how I found out that my credit card # was stolen... I saw the transaction on mint since I check it more frequently than logging into my credit card account.

[Anonymous]

I don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Same way I trust the bank. I have no reason to believe that someone who works at Mint is less honest than someone who works for my bank, and by that I mean the subcontractor that no doubt handles all of the electronic information for the bank. Plus, you can't use Mint to transfer money. You are a t greater risk using your credit card at a restaurant.

I understand that you can't move money using Mint. But Mint has access to your username and password to all of your financial accounts.
If a hacker were able to retrieve username/passwords to your bank/brokerage, they would be able to transfer funds.

If a hacker were to get into your bank, they could have access to that 1 account from you. Bad, but people usually have multiple accounts.
If a hacker were to get into your Mint information, they could have access to all of your accounts; devastating.

And these security breaches do occur. From a quick search here are 2 where 50 million+ passwords were compromised:
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/04/why-livingsocials-50-million-password-breach-is-graver-than-you-may-think/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21644317

I still think it introduces too much risk.