[foxandmouse]

One thing I didn't realize before signing up for these apps is that it voids the fraud protection offered by your bank. Since then I've switched back to a spreadsheet and couldn't be happier. There's plenty of great templates to start from on reddit personal finance subreddits.

[philomath_mn]

> voids the fraud protection offered by your bank

I am guessing this depends on how you connect your bank to the app? If you just hand over plaintext username/password, maybe you don't get protections. But most apps use a service like Plaid which should limit permissions to read-only.

[syncbehind]

Can...you elaborate on this?

[Jtsummers]

Mint and others used to (still do? I haven't used any of these things in over a decade) take your username/password and sometimes even security questions and then use screen scraping to get transactions and balances and such. This was (is?) because many banks and CC companies didn't have proper APIs or access tokens that could offer limited access. The result was that Mint and others could, in theory, initiate transactions as you.

Naturally, banks and others said, "Don't do that, and if you do you're going to lose some of your protections because you're willfully giving away your credentials."

[syncbehind]

Oh wow, no idea. But that's definitely a big red flag.

[foxandmouse]

Same, I was shocked when I found out, I only registered for mint recently and there was no warning in the sign up process.