Yodlee MoneyCenter is an account aggregation service that logs into your online accounts automatically in order to track your financial balances and transactions. It’s also a great way to see all your rewards points. While Yodlee is available for free directly, they make their money by licensing their software to financial institutions. Thus, you may know it instead as HSBC EasyView, Fidelity FullView, Wachovia OneStop, or Bank of America My Portfolio.
I’ve discussed in the past why I use Yodlee to track my accounts, despite the potential security concerns. One of the major worries was that if someone got a hold of your Yodlee password, they could then get access to all your other passwords. But I just noticed that at least for the Bank of America and HSBC versions, they have disabled the ability to see your individual account passwords. They are still viewable in the Yodlee direct version.
I like the hidden passwords, and now use BofA My Portfolio exclusively. It is slightly more inconvenient for those that use the service as a password reminder service, but I think it makes things significantly more secure. It is much easier for a hacker to gain access into a single user’s account by phishing or spyware than to break into to a bank’s central database. Still not perfectly secure, but I thought I’d give people a heads up.
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What I would like for Yodlee to do is another set of security password or something. Many banks now have additional security questions or images.
That’s another reason why I like it through BofA or other bank. I think all banks are legally required to have a secondary verification process now.
I started using Bofa’s myportfolio for last few months, and I like it a lot. I feel the system is secured enough. Also, I like all the reporting options they have. I could even check my 401k daily changes on bofa itself.
As long as I pay with any of my credit/debit cards I dont have to track the expenses, and I could see them all in a pie chart!
Yodlee could implement a secondary verification process on the direct site; it’s a good suggestion to through at them. Also, I think banks are bigger targets than Yodlee will ever be.
“all banks are legally required to have a secondary verification process now”
You mean the government has made them ask me those stupid questions I never have an answer to? *sigh* I am one of those people who doesn’t have consistent “favorite” anything, and I forget too many details about my past. To top it off, I moved and changed schools too often, so any best friend or school related questions are impossible for me to answer.
Since the secondary questions are usually (Emigrant’s a big exception, but their questions are reasonable) asked only if you’re at an unfamiliar computer, my cheat sheet of answers is never there when I need it. So, I basically answer them in a predictable way based on the question asked. Ultra high security, that.
BOA and Emigrant both have decent verification questions, so props to them.
*rant off* 🙂
Regarding Yodlee,
I used BOA’s portfolio originally, but then switched to Yodlee when it offered significantly more features. BOA has finally caught back up somewhat (although I still like some of the history Yodlee offers). Plus, Yodlee now has my account history, and I’d lose that if I go back to BOA. I’m torn.
I have been using BofA’s My Portfolio over 6 months now and am happy with the service. The bar charts and the transactions reporting are very easy to view and understand. I can even check my credit card rewards.
Yodlee is adding a secondary verification process similar to the Bank of America login in the next major release. You will see it on the Yodlee site in April.
I also really like Yodlee, though for the past few months it’s had difficulty accessing my HSBC Direct account and there’s now no bill pay option to pay Bank of America credit card accounts. Anyone experiencing the same problems?
I just registered Yodlee. Thanks Jonathan
yd – If you really hate the extra security questions, the solution is easy. Choose one other password, say “brownies”.
What’s your high school’s mascot? brownies
What your mother’s maiden name? brownies
What street did you live on? brownies
What’s your favorite food? brownies!
Then it’s just like they are asking for 2 passwords instead of 1.
I’ve just adopted a simple but usable rule for getting a word out of the sentence and using that. At least it’s not all the same word.
I’m just really picky about user-interfaces and pointless exercises. This is one that gets on my nerves big time.
It honestly wouldn’t bug me if the questions were better – or if I could pick my own questions. Like I said before, EmigrantDirect and BOA used good ones as for remembering (social, birthday, mother’s name, etc) (but horrible ones in the sense that any identity thief would probably have that information about you anyway).
I think we now know what Jonathan’s favorite dessert is… 🙂
How does BoA My Portfolio, Yodlee etc, compare with services like wesabe.com or MyMint.com etc. ?