Emily, thanks for pointing out that blog post and your concern. As Sasha mentioned, in accordance with Mint’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Condition, your data is yours, and it can be deleted or removed whenever you request it to be deleted. If you want to close an account at Mint, you can currently email security@mint.com to request the removal. I do apologize for any inconvenience the current method of removal may cause.

But again, to stress, your data is yours! And rightly so. The main reason why we limit the collection of personal identifiable information on Mint is because we care about our user’s privacy and anonymity. If you have already requested your account to be deleted, rest assured it’ll be removed in accordance to our deletion policy.

I personally always encourage anyone to read the privacy policy along with the terms and condition to any service they are consider using – not just to Mint! Feel free to browse the summary page on safety, and if you have other concerns on security, please email security@mint.com for further clarification.

Cap
Mint Community Team

I should really be packing, but you raised a pretty serious concern so I couldn’t help looking up the data retention policy, which is in Mint’s Privacy policy here under “12. You can transport or delete your data”: http://mint.com/privacy.html

What they have to say actually seems consistent with what I’ve seen on similar sites. It would be a huge liability for them if they did not treat personal data properly, and what I read seems to be on the up-and-up:

“Your data is yours. You can take it with you or remove it anytime you want. When you request us to delete your account for the Service, your data will be permanently expunged from our primary production servers and further access to your account will not be possible. We will also promptly disconnect any connection we had established to your Account Information. However, portions of your data, consisting of aggregate data derived from your Account Information, may remain on our production servers indefinitely. Your data may also remain on backup server or media. Mint keeps these backups to ensure our continued ability to provide the Service to you in the event of malfunction or damage to our primary production servers.”

They have lots of other info too farther down about how the servers are protected.

Still, only you can decide what your comfort level is with using and accessing personal information online, however–I know people who NEVER even provide their credit card number online for fear of compromise, and then there are people like me who hardly give it a second thought as long as there’s SSL in place. It’s quite a personal decision.

I did read the article but don’t necessarily agree. The author mentions that transaction information was sent via e-mail alert, but did not mention whether the account number or other truly personally identifying information was included. I’m only really concerned if that’s the case, and I know I can turn off the alerts so it doesn’t bug me. The article seems a bit alarmist to me and I’d rather find out the details for myself.

I’m also wondering where the account information “stays” after an account is deleted. They should post their database archiving and purge policy for users to see. I’m going on a trip or else I’d look for this tonight, but will do when I return.

It definitely seems that the close account option needs to be more prominent on the Mint site, since I’ve seen a few comments to that effect.

I just read this article…. “Mint Sucks”– on Techlahore’s weblog an enraged blogger shares his experiences. He makes some really, really good points.

After reading this, I decided to delete my account. I had signed up and was liking it. BUT! While you can delete your “profile” all your account info stays . Yes your passwords. They do not delete your information if you decide to leave. My information is now their’s forever more.

I really suggest reading this.

Thanks for the in-depth review! You’ve nailed it on the head that Mint aims to be a simpler and easier tool for people to track and manage their money. You’re also right on the money that Mint doesn’t store sensitive information such as financial account numbers, nor require personal identifiable information to use the service.

There’s obviously lots of improvement to be made, and here’s a list of verified features in upcoming release:

* Transaction-level drill-down from the spending pie graph
* Rename / nick-name an account
* Exclude accounts (e.g. don’t show my business account, just my checking)
* Support for student loans, mortgages, and brokerages.

As you mentioned, we really do care about user feedback. The point is to build a service that’s helpful, with intuitive and simple functionality.

In regards to the “Ways to Save” offer pages, the service/account offerings algorithm will definitely be tweaked as time progress. For those interested, you should note that Mint only shows offerings that are calculated to save users the most money – whether or not Mint gets a commission. The aim of the system is to present users with objective results in finding better rates and services. Although veteran rate-chasers can visit forums such as Fatwallet’s Finance or PF blogs, our goal is that, down the road, average users can find the best rate possible by utilizing Mint, without the effort and research required.

Thanks again for the review.

Yodlee MoneyCenter is more like Quicken. They don’t have saving tips. Incidentally the only “saving” tip I was able to get out of Mint was switching to Vonage from AT&T…which really wouldn’t save me any money since my internet connection is part of my AT&T bill ;) (obviously they have no way of knowing this)

I realize that in 2007, I’m probably in more databases than I care to think about, but that’s the tradeoff with convenience. Even our own government has been impromperly protecting our information. See: http://www.govtech.com/pcio/articles/125413

I tried to access Yodlee directly a few times, but it seemed the only free way was through my financial institutions, so that’s been my experience. After seeing your comment earlier, I searched for MoneyCenter and found a signup link, but after I entered all my data I was promptly greeted with an error page. I will try again later to see what they’ve got to offer. Do they offer saving tips, or just charting capabilities, and is the service free at all levels of functionality? I’d happily review it too if I could get in….

I checked out the review on your site with great interest, and will say that understanding a bit about the situation of startups nowadays, I can see both sides of the issue.

On the one hand, you want to have servers and systems hardy enough to withstand Paris-Hilton-Goes-To-Jail type web traffic without the slightest slowdown. You want v1.0 to be whiz-bang impressive, to slice, dice, julienne and fricassee with ease.

I’m a perfectionist, so I certainly get this, and I want the products I use to be really great and reach their potential. In general, there’s not much I encounter that I can’t imagine several improvements for.

But if you did hold out to launch until you’d built out every conceivable piece of functionality, you might run out of funds before you even got to launch a thing, and the world would never know you existed. That’s where you’re at a loss against the big companies.

To make your mark as a startup in the post dot-com era, I think you may need to launch small, give people a taste of what a service can be and then let their feedback help shape the rest.

Mint has at least launched their concept, a relatively functional concept, and from this point they can work to get partners and other relationships in line. This, in my view, is what will make or break their service.

I don’t feel that just showing banking and credit card accounts will be sufficient for Mint going forward, and can’t imagine they do, either.

I do feel that we’re in the unique situation here of being able to request, even demand what we want. Why not make this what we want it to be, be as vocal as possible to bring about the changes we want? During my beta testing of Mint, I inundated them with markups, screenshots, and at one point, a 30-page report. Do I expect them to use my insights to make it better? Absolutely. And now they have a $50,000 award to channel back into improvements. It’s a start.

I can tell Intuit that I’d like their Quicken service to be free, accessible online, and to automatically aggregate all my account data. I’m sure people have. They’re an established institution with the money to build this and a nice big staff, so why haven’t they? There may be an element of having lost touch with their user base here. Sure, they’re plenty profitable, but it’s still a shame.

Can we make Mint a money management tool of, by, and for the people?

Only time will tell, but I’m giving it a try.

The details of my husband’s Chase card aren’t coming up, but since we just paid it off I’ll know that any number shift is bad.

Also, it can’t get details from my checking. But Quicken is having problems with that too (though it worked at first). I’m about to move all that anyway and I know it picks up on Wachovia where my husband banks.

Anyway, I just signed up because it sounds really great! The only issue I’m having right now is that it didn’t find *any* transactions for my Chase credit card (the only I use now). Bills paid through ING show up fine, but nothing on the credit card.

The author does note that Mint doesn’t follow investment accounts even though Yodlee does. From what I can see Mint doesn’t seem to be interested in supporting those types of accounts (forum postings). My own not-so-generous review of Mint is on my own blog. Not trying self-promotion here but I am not going to type in everything here thats in my own blog post.

With Mint, I think we have more hope of their listening than with Quicken. :-)

This is Sasha, but I do agree with Flexo.

From what I’ve seen, Mint is actually more secure than most implementations of Yodlee (i.e via Fidelity and Wachovia). For those, if I logged in and chose to edit my account information, I could see all my security question answers in clear text. The password, however, was not and could not be cut and pasted or otherwise harvested.

In Mint, you really can’t see much of that information at all–once it’s entered, it doesn’t seem to be stored in a user-accessible place. Sure, you could see my balances and accounts, but someone could very easily find that going through anyone’s garbage (who doesn’t burn or shred like I do) or stealing their mail.

I am very concerned about my security and privacy online, however I think people often forget that the most easily compromised of all is a mailbox sitting by the street (outside someone’s house, no less). Anyone stealing mail could get abalances, account numbers, plus credit card applications and cheques neatly preprinted with your name. Mailboxes are one-stop shops for identity thieves, and often have very little security.

There’s so much that’s vulnerable. Last year 3 coworkers and my mother found that thieves had made false ATM cards drawing upon their accounts and withdrew funds. They hadn’t even needed any data to begin with–they apparently came up with an algorithm that would generate actual card numbers which somehow worked using default PINs and just started tapping funds from accounts.

It was a known issue the bank was addressing, but my mother had an especially hard time regaining her funds because she didn’t notice anything was amiss until her statement arrived one month later.

The advantage of checking your accounts every day is that you’re acutely aware of every transaction, and so can stop this kind of abuse in its tracks. I would have an account shut down promptly at the first sign of abuse. And account portal services like Mint and Yodlee just offer an easy way to aggregate this information. Mint even has alerts, which mean 10 minutes after an instance of abuse occurs, I can find out about it on my mobile phone.

You can be robbed (or a victim of attempted robbery) at any time. The key is to limit your liability.

I’m so glad to hear that Mint is proving helpful for you. I am in total agreement about the downloading. During the 8 months I was trying to use Quicken, I downloaded data into it only 2 or 3 times. I have tons of accounts to manage, and it was far too annoying to have to do all that downloading and importing.

I definitely want to see more category customization with Mint, plus a way to disregard certain accounts. I have escrow accounts for my tenants with one of my banks, and when I try to import my finances, my tenant’s security deposit always gets pulled in to. That’s not really my money nor is it my interest, since it all goes back to the tenant unless they break things, so I’d arther not have it counted as part of my savings or net worth.

Okay, I have to know–with 15 accounts, what’s your current favorite?

I’m a big follower of your comments–I’ve seen them on this and other blogs and always find them insightful. I see you have a blog, and will have to check it out. I look forward to reading about your ongoing experience with Mint–I plan to use it too and send the company all my comments so they can make Mint the product I want it to be.

I start and stop using Quicken (and now on Mac, iBank) every few years, because the process is just so difficult to stay on top of. With Mint, I don’t have to keep everything updated — it does it all automatically. The only thing I have to do is make sure I set up online access when I open new accounts (bank and credit cards). I, too, am a bit of a rate chaser and have a ridiculous number of bank and credit card accounts (15 at the moment). Keeping track of them all is awful, so I used the 80/20 rule. Not perfect, but working as far as time/benefit goes.

With Mint, I’m going to MAKE money. I opened an American Express Cash Back card, and am going to start putting my everyday expenses on it. I didn’t before because I wanted everything to come out of my checking account right away, which was my clearest view into my activity. With a credit card, if I missed a few days of loading the data, I could get too far off track and did not want to take the risk. Now, my information will always be there, categorized and up-to-date — so I can use a cash-back card without feeling like I’m in danger of over-spending.

I do wish there was a way to customize categories, and am looking forward to enhancements like drilling down to the transaction level from the pie chart and, of course, investments (though that information is very easy to update in Quicken/iBank, so it’s less of any issue for me). But Mint is already like a dream come true for me — and it caught that one of my cards (on which I don’t keep a balance so I never noticed) is actually charging me 32% interest!! I had no idea. I called them the same day and canceled it. I can’t believe that rate is legal.

Thank you, Mint!

Plus, I’ve been having some trouble with Quicken. So now I’m going to have both going through October and see which one performs better. May post periodical reviews, we’ll see.

That’s the same reason I never got into using Yodlee. I don’t want to duplicate any effort.