lovemoney.com

[LordGrover]

Never been here, the Finance forum and search is down so not able to see whether it's been asked before.

Does anyone here have any experience of lovemoney.com?
It looks quite interesting but I am a little wary of effectively giving them access to my private details. I bank with smile and they are unable to comment.

[LordGrover]

lovemoney.com said:

By using the service, you authorize lovemoney.com ltd and Yodlee to access third party sites designated by you, on your behalf, to retrieve information requested by you, and to register for accounts requested by you. For all purposes hereof, you hereby grant lovemoney.com ltd and Yodlee a limited power of attorney, and you hereby appoint lovemoney.com ltd and Yodlee as your true and lawful attorney-in-fact and agent, with full power of substitution and resubstitution, for you and in your name, place and stead, in any and all capacities, to access third party internet sites, servers or documents, retrieve information, and use your information, all as described above, with the full power and authority to do and perform each and every act and thing requisite and necessary to be done in connection with such activities, as fully to all intents and purposes as you might or could do in person. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT WHEN LOVEMONEY.COM ONLINE BANKING OR YODLEE ACCESSES AND RETRIEVES INFORMATION FROM THIRD PARTY SITES, LOVEMONEY.COM ONLINE BANKING AND YODLEE ARE ACTING AS YOUR AGENT, AND NOT THE AGENT OR ON BEHALF OF THE THIRD PARTY. You agree that third party account providers shall be entitled to rely on the foregoing authorization, agency and power of attorney granted by you. You understand and agree that the service is not endorsed or sponsored by any third party account providers accessible through the service.

I don't really know what that means so I suppose it's better to give it a miss.

[TooLateForAName]

The stuff about them being your agent rather than an agent of the 3rd party bank is probably to avoid any fsa regulation.

(or at least I couldnt see anything about FSA from a very quick look at the site, but not a service I would use {you want all my bank details for every bank, yes certainly})

edit to add - love the taglines

lovemoney.com said:

Thank you for using The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

lovemoney.com said:

Thank you for using Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

Edited by TooLateForAName on Wednesday 3rd February 15:56

[mrqueen]

Does seem rather handy being able to effctively monitor all your accounts in one go, but how on earth do they make any money?

In this digital age I really wouldn't feel too safe about divulging very sensitive information so anonymously. Who can access your information, how secure are your details? We all know how easy it is to get credit cards, if this database was hacked imagine the potential windfall any crook could receive.

Edited by mrqueen on Friday 5th February 13:44

[Gareth79]

It seems to be a UK conversion of http://www.yodlee.com/

I can see that it's a good idea, but they seem to sidestep the issue of liability about giving them your logon details, they just talk about how their encryption is as good as the banks', which isn't really answering the question, eg:

https://www.lovemoney.com/onlinebanking/feedback.a...

the site said:

loshea said

Hi there - I telephoned my bank HSBC and they said that I shouldn't give my bank ID and security code to anyone as it would breach my T&Cs with them and would be highly unsecure. What do you advise? Louise

04 December 2009

Carl (lovemoney.com staff member) said

@loshea - here are a few points on our security, I hope this helps:

1) We use the same levels of encryption as banks and credit card companies.

For more information, read our security FAQs.

2) It's a "read-only" service - no money can be moved.

lovemoney.com online banking allows you to keep a close eye on your transactions and balances all in one place. lovemoney.com online banking does not offer online payment services.

3) You register anonymously.

We don't ask for your name or any personally identifiable information when you register - just your email address.

(then)

When you log in to your bank through this service, the credentials are encrypted, and therefore you are not divulging any information to a third party and therefore not breaking any terms and condistions to a bank.

None of this convinces me that you are not breaking their T&C's - as soon as a bank puts a statement on their website that they approve of the site then I will be! Apparently it asks the security questions that your bank/cc asks, eg. mother's maiden name, first school, the full passwords etc.

That said, I'm sure the banks could block it easily, and I'm mystified why it is left in limbo.

[Simian Dave]

Hi,

I work there; in fact I'm working on this product right now.

I'll keep it brief (we start a new release tomorrow and I'm up against it)...

Yes, we use Yodlee. Yodlee power a lot of these sorts of sites in the US and Austrailia and are entering a few other markets. They processes trillions of pounds in transaction data a day, have millions of users and have never had a security breach.

No, we (as in lovemoney.com) don't see any of your bank access details. We pass them directly on to Yodlee for them to prove to your bank who you are. They use very good encryption to store this data with, in a very secure facility. All data is sent over the internet encrypted too and I've worked pretty hard to try and make sure there aren't any security holes. We use 'friendly' hackers to test the site and said the area that contains the banking application was 'excellent'.

Yes we can see what banks you have told us about - we need to in case anything goes wrong and you want our help fixing anything (like not being able to add an account, an account stops working, etc). But we can't see anything more than 'Barclays'. This data isn't available anywhere except through an customer services window into Yodlee from lovemoney.com.

You can't move money around with this tool.

lovemoney.com Online Banking doesn't have any personal information on you - even if the system was hacked or if a human with inside access got to your data for nefarious purposes they couldn't steal your ID with this tool.

If you worry about security for this, then please think about what you are doing next to you give your card details to Amazon, or www.a.n.other.com to buy something - these people have everything they need to take money from you!

This service costs us money to provide to users for free, but the business is in profit and we see this as a way of attracting new users, gaining PR, etc. We may charge for certain aspects of it at some point in the future; the customer service for this free application is a full time job for several people and the development time, server time, storage costs, etc could be covered by charging for new bits and/or services as these costs increase with more users.

If you want any more info, please PM me.

Cheers,

Dave

Edited by Simian Dave on Monday 29th March 10:45