Gerald and AltaRed - Many posters here have indicated that they use the quicken or money software to download details of their accounts from banks, brokerages,* mutual fund houses, etc.*
http://early-retirement.org/forums/i...p?topic=6440.0* and *
http://early-retirement.org/forums/i...p?topic=4025.0
I see this as a potential security breach.* It seems that a good romanian or russian hacker with large capabilities would be very likely to see quicken as a great candidate for a large-scale scam involving all of these accounts;* a couple of ingenious new virii, spyware treats, and pfishing expeditions could set them up for a real big score.* *As a result, I do not choose to give quicken the account numbers and passwords of any of our several investment accounts.*
I do use my quicken software to manually keep an accurate track of our accounts.* I use the quicken "online" "One-Step Update" feature only to allow quicken to download the values of the various stock and mutual fund shares so that I can have a current valuation of our holdings.
I do worry about Quicken since they are the biggest guys in town and have the most oppurtunity to compromise our financial security.* I do believe that quicken has a first-rate band of the finest internet security people working these issues but I have some respect for the capabilities of the bad guys also.* Better to be safe than sorry.
JohnP