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cotr
January 15, 2009 6:43 PM
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thats awesome and useful.

go mint!

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Truthie
January 15, 2009 6:47 PM
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This type of service is seriously useful. It's probably a little premature for Mint to start charging for their services, but if they do stuff like this I think a lot of people wouldn't mind paying a modest annual fee.

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AliyaBabasaur
January 15, 2009 7:44 PM
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@truthie: HA! anyone paying for Mint would be a sucker. they have some serious issues they need to work on before they could even consider asking people to pay for their services. Or maybe their whole marketing pitch will be something like, \"if you pay for our services, we'll actually respond to your support inquiries, instead of just ignore them for 6 weeks then send you a form email that doesn't even address your problem.\"

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AliyaBabasaur
January 15, 2009 7:47 PM
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@AliyaBabasaur: *ignoring them...so annoyed with mint I can't even type

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cpt.snerd
January 15, 2009 6:48 PM
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I don't have an account, but I guess with more established and reputable places such as my Citi cards account - I'd like them to tell me if there was something going on and I did not know about it.

I guess it all goes down to whether I think they would use that info for bad things or else if they just \"know\". Collecting data is fine too as long as it was an aggregate type of data collection... Just my 2 cents.

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Eldritch
January 15, 2009 6:48 PM
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Huh... on one hand, it's awesome they looked out for people and sent the alert... on the other hand, do they need to know what I'm buying?

I'm torn on this one.

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downwithmonstercable
January 15, 2009 7:25 PM
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@Eldritch: I think in this case, they probably ran a query across their database to check for a certain piece of information, like the name of the company. I don't think they looked at each transaction. In Mint's case, they already have all that information there, this was just a case of filtering out anything besides that specific transaction.

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MosesKabob
January 15, 2009 7:34 PM
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@downwithmonstercable: Yeah, they do classify your purchase based on the overall classification given by your credit card, so I'm sure this charge was classified a certain way. Not that challenging to run a DB query for \".25\" and \"Misc Fee\" or whatever.. or even \".25\", because who charges 25 cents to their credit card?

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Jordan Martin
January 15, 2009 6:59 PM
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@Eldritch: no one looks at the crap you're buying, and really, do you care if someone knows you're buying it? If it's not something you would buy at a store in front of people due to embarrassment, you either need to not buy it or grow some.

My philosophy on \"Big Brother\": If you're not doing anything wrong, then why complain if someone is watching. It's not the watching you should question but the actual \"idea\" that something is wrong/illegal.

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jackal676
January 15, 2009 7:33 PM
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@Jordan Martin: So you wouldn't mind being monitored while having sex, right? I mean, as long as it's between two consenting adults, you're not doing anything illegal.

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madanthony
January 15, 2009 9:11 PM
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@jackal676:

I'd be thrilled and a little turned on if someone wanted to watch me have sex.

Unless it was like, my mom or something. That would just be weird.

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ViperBorg
January 15, 2009 7:20 PM
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@Jordan Martin: Ugh, your one of those people.

Go back to England.

Sorry, I enjoy my freedoms.

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CubeRat
January 15, 2009 7:13 PM
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@Jordan Martin:


My roommate (who is big into conspiracy theories) got into an argument with me about Big Brother. I told him I didn't care so much that I was being watched because I do not do things that are illegal. No matter what I said though it was like talking to a brick wall.

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cabjf
January 15, 2009 6:49 PM
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Well, if you sign up for a service like Mint, you have to realize that they do in fact hold all the data in your accounts in a database somewhere. It would be good to disallow them to automatically search through it for various reasons though.

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stevejust
January 15, 2009 6:49 PM
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Big Brother is watching you. But at least he's got minty-fresh breath.

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Canino
January 15, 2009 6:50 PM
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We'd bet that the affected users were pleased that Mint was looking out for them, but we're a little nervous that Mint had gone through all of our charges.


Um...I don't think someone sat down and manually went through all the charges for every customer. A simple query on the database looking for the reported charge amount(s) and the reported merchant name(s) would yield the results. Seriously maybe 2 minutes of work.

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Spider Jerusalem
January 15, 2009 7:12 PM
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@Canino: That's what I was going to say, exactly. I can't imagine they don't have a search function for stuff like that.

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hellinmyeyes
January 15, 2009 7:24 PM
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@SpiderJerusalem: Uhh, that wasn't really the point. The point was that Mint has the power/desire to go through people's charges, whether for a purpose like this or anything else less kosher. Mint can tap quite a treasure chest of people's finances to gain a lot of knowledge about the participants and then do whatever they want.

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Canino
January 15, 2009 7:51 PM
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@hellinmyeyes: Of course they could...so could amazon or ebay or anyone else with an online store or any other online system that accesses your info.


I disagree that that wasn't the point - it seems pretty straightforward someone thought it was a manual process...we're a little nervous that Mint had gone through all of our charges

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Thataboy
January 15, 2009 6:51 PM
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I'm sure Mint didn't \"go through\" everyone's charges to see your porn subscriptions and ACLU fees. It was probably as easy as running a search for a term like \"Adele Services.\"


If that runs afoul of your privacy expectations, 1. you need to get a grip, and 2. what the hell are you doing using Mint?

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Corporate_guy
January 15, 2009 8:57 PM
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@Thataboy: The interesting thing about being scared about Mint looking at this info is that is exactly what their service is marketed to do. People sign up so mint can make a copy of their financial data and store it.

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chucklebuck
January 15, 2009 6:51 PM
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If they don't store your bank login information, how were they able to check people's accounts for this without those people actively logging in? Or did they only check for people who had logged in on or after the time period that the Adele charges started showing up?

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GildaKorn
January 16, 2009 3:44 PM
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@chucklebuck: \"We ask for your online banking user name and passwords, but we do not see or store that information.\"

I don't understand how they can not \"see\" or \"store\" it, but they can still update your transactions regularly? Is it stored in a cookie on my browser or something, sent directly to my bank?

If you use Mint, do you have to log in to your bank sites every time you start it up?

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PsychicPsycho3
January 15, 2009 6:57 PM
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@chucklebuck: Obviously the information about transactions is stored on their servers -- that's the whole point of the service, categorizing and sorting transactions. They don't store your account #s or passwords.

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dreamcatcher2
January 19, 2009 1:48 AM
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@PsychicPsycho3: They don't store your account #s or passwords, but the financial institution aggregator service provider they use definitely does (I don't know what service they use - I believe at one time they used Yodlee, but they no longer identify their provider(s) by name).

I believe Wells Fargo typically objects to storage of this information by aggregators, but for all other FIs, *somebody* definitely stores your FI login info. That's how they download the information automatically. Then, as you say, that transaction information is stored on their servers.

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chucklebuck
January 15, 2009 7:27 PM
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@PsychicPsycho3: Right, so that would mean that anyone who hadn't logged into Mint since before the beginning of this Adele thing (not sure when the charges started appearing in general) would not have gotten a notification, since the only transactions Mint would have stored would be the ones since your last login to Mint. That's what I was wondering.

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chucklebuck
January 15, 2009 7:28 PM
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@chucklebuck: Rather, they'd only have the transactions from your last login and before.

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Don Chiurazzi
January 15, 2009 7:24 PM
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@PsychicPsycho3: Yes they do... when you make an account with mint you add accounts by typing in your log in and passwords for your various bank accounts. If they didn't store that they would not be able to update your transactions.

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Scott Stephan
January 15, 2009 6:55 PM
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No one at Mint sat down and looked at all your charges. In fact, probably no one at Mint has that ability. They just ran a simple query on the database and sent e-mails to users who matched. This is a 5 minute operation and no one saw any of your data

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MoreFunThanToast
January 15, 2009 6:56 PM
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Mint really is awesome, I signed up for the service after reading about on consumerist and it's been a great way to keep track of my spending and budgeting.

and now fraud alert? Mint FTW!

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2 replies
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Corporate_guy
January 15, 2009 8:58 PM
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@MoreFunThanToast: Yea, I am signing up right now. This service looks awesome.

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bluewyvern
January 16, 2009 9:10 AM
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@Corporate_guy: I've been thinking about signing up with Mint. Even downloaded the iphone app the other day. Now I think I'm going to do it. All indications point to yes.

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karmaghost
January 15, 2009 7:09 PM
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I only get notifications from mint if i visit or update my account for some reason. Then it sends notifications of things that have happened weeks, one time a month, earlier.

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swintronix
January 15, 2009 7:14 PM
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I got that email from Mint, but I was NOT dinged by Adele, GFDL, or anyone else wanting 25ยข. So, I don't think that Mint actually scoured everyone's account for this. It was more like an FYI email blast, I figured.

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Veeber
January 16, 2009 2:12 PM
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@swintronix: I'm using Mint and didn't get the email. Then again I didn't get that charge.

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GC
January 15, 2009 7:16 PM
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I really wish Mint would support Canadian banks. Plz?

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Joseph Miller
January 15, 2009 7:23 PM
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Slightly off-topic, but Mint has it's own problems with misreporting account balances in my experience (w/ a Wells Fargo account). Still, it's a 99% awesome service and freakin' free.

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schiff
January 15, 2009 7:25 PM
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Its nice to know someone is looking out for the common person, but at the same time I think it would be appropriate to have this as an account subscription option... something like \"Fradulent or Suspicious activity review\" and then you could set alert options like email, txt message, elctric shock therapy, etc.

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Kamidari
January 15, 2009 7:27 PM
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That's pretty cool... After hearing about that scam, I actually looked at my Mint account to see if I could set up an alert based on a .25 charge, or based on the merchant name. Turns out I couldn't (as far as I could tell - although I'd still like to be able to), but at least they're handling this particular case.

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Chongo
January 15, 2009 7:35 PM
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I would be very pleased had they warned me of this. When I signed up for mint, I assumed they had the ability to do this anyways.

Thinking about it from a programming standpoint... all they had to do was write a function that said:

IF there was a charge by COMPANY X, SEND EMAIL to user

I don't see that as a breach of privacy.

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Blueskylaw
January 15, 2009 7:37 PM
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Over the past 24 hours, you may have read news reports in the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and elsewhere that millions of Americans may have recently been fraudulently charged about $0.25 each from merchants named Adele or GFDL.

How do these companies get millions of credit card numbers/information?
How come credit card companies cant tell that something is wrong when all of a sudden they start charging millions of people a quarter?

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1 replies
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Moonshadows
January 15, 2009 8:09 PM
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@Blueskylaw: People sign up for an account with them and provide it.


CC companies CAN, they choose not to because for ever $.25 charge to an account they billed a $.75 transaction fee

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youbastid
January 15, 2009 7:48 PM
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Thanks mint, but could you get on the friggin' ball with Dollar Savings direct? Complaints are in the hundreds and they're taking their sweet ass time actually getting it to work.

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Anonymous
January 16, 2009 7:52 PM
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@youbastid: We've been keep users posted on the status of Dollar Savings Direct on the Forum and on our Facebook page. We have fixed the problem but have not rolled it out to the live site as of yet. This requires a release and we're trying to get the next release out as soon as possible. It could be a few days, it could be next week. I'd rather post something more definitive but I realize you all are anxious so I am passing along the updates as I hear them. Thanks again for your patience. - Stephen

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Anonymous
January 15, 2009 7:51 PM
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I'm a Mint user and I think it's FANTASTIC that they did this for me. I really couldn't care less if they scour my transactions for data that makes their site more useful to me and more profitable, too - so long as I don't get emails from their partners or anything like that. If you're privacy obsessed, don't use Mint.

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Tamar Weinberg
January 15, 2009 8:20 PM
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I'm echoing sentiment from more than one commenter (and hopefully adding some more), but here goes anyway:

\"...we'd be a little nervous that Mint had gone through all of our charges. What do you think?\"

I'm a Mint user and I really have nothing to hide. But I'd say that I'm pretty sure that the Mint team just did a database search for the problematic specific charge rather than look through entire accounts. I know they have the power to look into more, and guess what? They already have my finance information already. In other words, to me, it seems already like an \"opt in.\" If Mint's Terms of Service don't address this kind of warning, perhaps their legal team should consider including it so that people know what they're signing up for to avoid the anxiety this kind of messaging might have caused.

I think this is goes \"above and beyond\" what's expected and I applaud Mint for doing it. I wish credit card and checking companies took note.

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Corporate_guy
January 15, 2009 9:01 PM
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@Tamar Weinberg: If you want people to know about a feature putting it in a ToS no one reads isn't going to help. They need to put it in a faq.

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Tamar Weinberg
January 16, 2009 2:49 PM
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@Corporate_guy: Or they can put it in a TOS. It's no one's fault but yours if you don't read the TOS and then wonder why so-and-so happened when it's already addressed in writing.

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Corporate_guy
January 16, 2009 9:06 PM
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@Tamar Weinberg: No one reads those. Most sites just link to them now and don't even try to display them.

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UnicornMaster
January 15, 2009 8:33 PM
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@Tamar Weinberg: I agree. It's just a quick stored procedure or set of rules they applied to send that email alert out. There's nobody physically looking through your finances. Just like they send you an alert when your bills are due, your balance is low or you're reaching your credit limit. There isn't a monkey sorting through your account for this information, it's all computers these days.

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XTC46
January 15, 2009 8:25 PM
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as much as I have bashed on Mint in the past for the inherited security ricks of this type of server, this act is the type of service which makes the benefit start out weighing the risk of using it. Well done mint.

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boomersix
January 15, 2009 8:46 PM
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@xtc46: \"this act is the type of service which makes the benefit start out weighing the risk of using it\"

Huh?

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Anonymous
January 15, 2009 8:44 PM
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Mint doesn't need to look at peoples transactions to alert them to the presence of the fraudulent transaction. It'll all be computerised and a simple automated database search just for the fraudulent transaction is all thats needed. That would generate a list of customers to notify and their job is done. At no point do they need to actually look at transactions.

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Lisa Brewster
January 15, 2009 9:16 PM
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From Mint's privacy policy:

Mint uses your Account Information as follows:

* to offer the Service to you;
* to deliver information relevant to your financial interests, such as offers for ways to save from third party product and service providers (\"Mint Offers\")
* to deliver administrative notices such as alerts and communications relevant to your use of the Service;
* for market research, project planning, troubleshooting problems, detecting and protecting against error, fraud or other criminal activity; and
* as otherwise set forth in this Privacy and Security Policy.

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gawieshnot
January 15, 2009 9:21 PM
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Don't banks charge for access using systems like Mint (or MS Money/Quicken)???

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1 replies
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Kelly McCarthy
January 15, 2009 9:38 PM
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@gawieshnot: No, banks don't charge. Mint is awesome, too, btw. Just one of the cool things they do is send me updates when I'm about to get hit with an erroneous fee. Somehow they get the info before it posts in my bank and posts online. Same with low balance, etc.. It's pretty sweet.

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smokinfoo
January 15, 2009 9:40 PM
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You're an idiot if you think they haven't already analyzed all of your data.

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Tim Pedersen
January 15, 2009 10:28 PM
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Mint is definitely an awesome service, especially for a financial idiot such as myself. I can see a complete view of everything I have and owe. All cards, accounts, 401k, car loan, everything in one place, smooshed together to create a beautiful display of my entire cash vs debt situation. LOVES IT. It also has budgeting alerts for every possible category and you can compare your spending to people around the country. So cool.

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Anonymous
January 15, 2009 10:36 PM
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I recently starting using Mint from reading about it on this site. I love Mint. I recently got an email from them that one of my credit cards dropped my APR and also included their phone number to call them.

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Shakeel Dalal
January 16, 2009 6:08 AM
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Honestly, I'm not too worried about Mint \"going through\" all my credit card transactions. They already do it anyway...thats kind of the point.

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HiEllie
January 16, 2009 4:15 PM
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I love Mint, they've been informing me of the ridiculous raising of interest rates on my citi card. Citibank=fail. Never miss a payment, none of that crap, and my interest rate goes up 6%, even as my chase interest rate drops nearly as dramatically. Thanks Mint, for keeping my informed about all sorts of misdeeds!

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cooldarkplace
January 16, 2009 6:11 PM
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Mint has a database of all your transactions. That is what Mint is. A database of all your transactions. Mint without that database doesn't exist. It's all built with consent of the users.

Every report, alert, etc that Mint provides is a query on that database. It prepares these reports for you. They go through all your charges every day to send you alerts such as \"high account balance\" or \"unusual activity in category: auto.\" This is just \"Unusual spending on category: SOMEONE IS STEALING FROM YOU.\"

Anyone who is bothered by Mint \"going through their transactions\" is not signed up for Mint.

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Jason Putorti
January 16, 2009 7:42 PM
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Hello all,

Several people in the comments have gotten it right. We simply did a database query to identify users that were charged by these scam artists. We do not go through individual user transactions, nor do we store any names, only e-mail addresses. We will continue to keep our brand promise of 24/7 financial protection as best as we can.

Thanks all,
Jason Putorti, mint.com

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