[wheaties]

I don't have the time to read and research exactly what happened. I see you settled for a large sum. Thus, I don't believe you. We've all been burned by companies that claim one thing and do the exact opposite. It doesn't matter if legally they are stating things accurately. What matters is how we, a mere human, would believe the plain English phrases used to be construed.

Hope you have success and I have no ill will towards you.

[briffle]

Yep, its right up there on the 'corporate-speak' next to "we're taking these alegations very seriously"

[jeandenis]

I understand your point (and yes we are all mere humans who like plain language).

Your data goes from your bank to the app that you authorized, via Plaid. It is not sold to anybody.

[adrr]

Did you pull all transactions on plaid auth requests? Did you store that data to build out your risk score product? You’re standard customer(one verifying their account for an ACH pull) more than likely didn’t know all their transactions were being stored and mined. They just wanted to fund their robinhood account. That is the issue.

[sroussey]

Derived data? All that aggregated stuff? Nothing?

[oh_sigh]

Not to be nit-picky, but is that data(or derivatives of the data) gifted, given, bartered for, or otherwise sent to parties that are not (plaid, user bank, connected app)?

Neither here nor there, but I just used Plaid for the first time yesterday to pay for the downpayment on my Tesla. It was a really nice, seamless experience.

[infogulch]

I would also like to see the (notably, very carefully followed) 'data is not sold' line strengthened to include all other forms of transmission.

Also a happy user of a service enabled by plaid tech.

[jeandenis]

I replied in some other thread. Copy-pasta:

No, your personal data is not sold or rented or given away or bartered to parties that are not Plaid, your bank, or the connected app. We talk about all of this in our privacy policy, including ways that data could be used — for example, with data processors/service providers (like AWS which hosts our services) for the purposes of running Plaid’s services or for a user’s connected app to provide their services.

[infogulch]

I saw that. Thank you for your patience and persistence in responding to so many pointed questions.

For any interested, here is a link to relevant section of the referenced privacy policy: https://plaid.com/legal/#consumers

I am also impressed by the Legal Changelog on the same page that clearly lays out a log of changes made to privacy & other published legal documents.

[Gimpei]

I worked at Plaid from when it was less than 50 people to when it was a little over 100. There was no selling of data going on when I was there in any form (anonymized, aggregated, or otherwise). More generally, it doesn't make sense for Plaid to sell data. They already make a huge amount of money on the API. Why jeopardize that? In terms of the settlement size, it actually seems like peanuts to me in comparison to the size of Plaid and the number of affected people. I mean it basically translates into 60 cents a person. This seems more like a payoff to the class action lawyers, enough to make it worth their while but basically nothing for their "clients."

[geoduck14]

Just because you settle, doesn't mean you are guilty.

[hellbannedguy]

I get it. It's just 58 million. I would fight.

[newfonewhodis]

No company would settle for such a large sum unless they were guilty or afraid of going through discovery.

[jsonne]

That's just not at all true. If you've ever worked in / around law you'd understand how it's less about right and wrong and more about risk management. Non guilty parties settle all the time. (I have no idea if that is true in this case or not) but simply the idea that they settled for $$$ amount means they're guilty is just false.

[kodah]

As an engineer that's had to advise corporate legal on how to look at various things I can assure you that most of it is just risk mitigation and reward. From lawsuits to contracts, it's all the same stuff. That's just how legal people think. I don't think it goes any deeper than that.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

How much did they settle for? I don't see that in the article. Just because they were sued for $58M doesn't mean that the settlement amount was anywhere near that!

[themacguffinman]

A legal settlement over a lawsuit is the epitome of "if legally they are stating things accurately", how can you possibly conclude that their settlement relates to how you, a mere human, believe the English phrases to be constructed. One explanation is dismissed because it touches on supposedly irrelevant legal details yet your belief is based entirely on another legal detail. It sounds like you've made up your mind already regardless of what the "plain English" circumstances could be.