Using Quicken Premier (Windows). I received an unpleasant surprise this evening. While doing my daily one step update, I noticed that the lines for three of my financial institutions did not feature a box for me to enter a password. Instead, I saw a yellow key icon. Clicking the key icon brought forth this message:
You no longer need to enter your financial institution credentials for Express Web Connect accounts.
I hasten to add that I have never volunteered to store any of my passwords on Quicken's servers. I care about the security and privacy of my financial details.
Quicken provided a web page link was provided by way of explanation:
When you set up your Express Web Connect accounts, you entered your username and password for your bank. Quicken then passed these credentials to our aggregation provider, who encrypted and stored your credentials on their servers in order to enable you to quickly download your banking transactions. ... Is my data safe?
Yes. The safety of your data is our number-one concern, and nothing is changing about where your data is stored. While our aggregation provider has always encrypted and stored your Express Web Connect bank account credentials, with this newer, more modern platform, we're actually increasing the security of Express Web Connect.
I strongly disagree with that last paragraph. Allowing my credentials to be stored with an unknown "aggregation provider" is not something I will ever consider to be safe.
I will attempt to switch from Express Web Connect to Direct Connect. If that is not possible, I am left with the choice of either doing manual downloads for these three accounts, or abandoning Quicken.