Comments for Report: Mint Considers Selling Anonymized Data from Its Users

Report: Mint Considers Selling Anonymized Data from Its Users

2009-05-18T19:01:32Z

According to a report from Bloomberg today, Mint.com's CEO Aaron Patzer is considering selling anonymized data about the service's users. Mint, the online personal finance aggregator, obviously sits on a lot of very interesting data, some of which the company has shared on its blog now and then. Given that this was just a short interview, the details about this plan are more than vague, and it would be interesting to know what kind of data Mint might be planning to sell. What is clear, though, is that Mint will have to be very careful if it doesn't want to scare away its customers.

]]> On Mint, users can aggregate information from their various checking, credit card, stock, and retirement accounts. Because of this, Mint could, at least in theory, build a very detailed financial profile of every user, though the company's Privacy and Security Policy clearly states that a user's privacy is not for sale.

Aggregate Data Only?

We can only hope that Mint is simply planning to sell aggregate data from its users and will hopefully refrain from selling anything more granular than that - including anonymized details about specific consumers and their shopping habits. We know that anonymized data on social networks is easily linked to specific users, and when AOL released some anonymized datasets of its users, these searches were also easily traced back to specific users. We can only imagine how easy it would be to do this with data from a user's credit cards, though in the Bloomberg interview, Patzer argues that his company "wouldn't share information about individual transactions."

Given the amazing quality of the data that Mint has access to, it is hard to blame the company for trying to monetize this information. Some of the data from Mint would surely be very interesting - and we can see that companies, for example, could use this data to get a clearer view of who their customers are.

Mint's Privacy and Security Record So Far: Impeccable

So far, Mint has had an impeccable record when it comes to security and privacy, though this interview will surely spook some users. Mint has to walk a very fine line here, as giving this data to Mint was already a leap of faith for a lot of consumers and Mint has worked hard to convince users that their data is safe on the service.

Comment from lemon obrien on 2009-05-18

2009-05-18T19:29:49Z

this is why i will never use a service like mint; in 1999 i worked for a start up to do exactly what mint is doing now; there is no way for them to make money except by selling user data.

also, here's a note for all the computer geeks... no one really needs to use something like mint, b/c it does nothing for you except complicate your life; if you have that many accounts, and don't know where your money is going; then yous a fool; and mint don't matter.

Comment from cease on 2009-05-18

2009-05-18T19:52:37Z

makes me want to use their site now, I would be willing to try it if they make it as anonymous as well as aol did with their search data.

Comment from Andrew Hedges on 2009-05-18

2009-05-18T20:08:34Z

Reminds me of a certain Saturday Night Live routine.

Comment from Falafulu Fisi on 2009-05-18

2009-05-18T20:15:48Z

I think that they should donate their data for free to the UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository. This free dataset repository at UC Irvine is used by researchers to test new algorithms and benchmarked those against the performance of existing algorithms against the same datasets. The datasets have been anonymized by donors, so as to hide personal informations.

Comment from Don on 2009-05-18

2009-05-18T20:16:31Z

I currently use and love Mint, but if they start selling data at any level, I delete my account.

Comment from kayvaan on 2009-05-18

2009-05-18T20:58:52Z

this was inevitable from the beginning, considering their business model

Comment from falufisi on 2009-05-18

2009-05-18T21:03:10Z

Time Berners-Lee predeicted this in a speech several months ago

He said that in a declining economy "The temptation of companies to generate revenue by selling their users' private information will be so great that many of them will not be able to resist

I say bye bye Mint. You have lost my trust, and I am not going to let another Madoff happen with my money. You are either 100% trustworthy or you are not. There is no middle ground here.

Comment from 墨尔本 on 2009-05-18

2009-05-18T23:54:04Z

Is this even leagal?

Comment from Bob on 2009-05-18

2009-05-19T00:59:46Z

Whatever happened to charging your users for your services instead of selling their data?

Comment from rs gold on 2009-05-18

2009-05-19T03:10:36Z

I love Mint!

Comment from rs powerleveling on 2009-05-18

2009-05-19T03:11:53Z

The temptation of companies to generate revenue by selling their users' private information will be so great that many of them will not be able to resist

Comment from matt @ Thrive on 2009-05-19

2009-05-19T20:47:24Z

When we were asked if we would do this at Thrive (www.justthrive.com), the entire team actually sat down at the long table to discuss the ethical considerations, and here is where we came down: the real issue is what people are doing with that data you are selling. Thrive exists to help people spend less and save more, and to help them grow financially. If we sold data this way, a primary consumer would be advertisers that would use the data to attempt to sell people more "stuff" in the world.

At Thrive, we felt we couldn't honestly live up to our promise and mission to help people spend less if we were profiting by equipping advertisers to get people to spend more. So we simply took the issue off the table: in aggregate or specifically, we won't sell that kind of data.

Every company has to make a decision for itself about what their mission is, why they exist, and how they are going to continue to exist. This is just Mint working on making theirs, and the Bloomberg article also mentions Rudder thinking about it. All of the personal finance sites that have data will have to decide what to do with it, and it will be interesting to see where they all end up.

Comment from RogerThat on 2009-05-20

2009-05-20T08:52:36Z

And the important question is... Who are the buyers? Is my private data! Other webs have another better business model. Readwriteweb could talk about the business model of others web financial products. Could be a good post.

Comment from Son Nguyen on 2009-05-20

2009-05-20T18:40:21Z

What the F! Hey, I need to read their terms of service again. They sit on a huge pile of valuable data of financial behaviors and it's a great temptation not to do something with it.

Comment from FireBrand on 2009-05-24

2009-05-24T22:40:32Z

If they sell this data, I will stop using them.

That is my private data, I don't care how they take my personal information out. I won't use anyone who is doing this.

Period end of story. Look for a blog entry if they move forward with this plan. Make your money off your clients the old fashioned way. Charge them. Don't sell data about them. No matter how impersonal it might seem to you.

Wake up and Smell the Coffee...