Article still sticks, tho.

And that is part of it right there: you can pick up a phone and call Thrive. The phone literally sits on my desk, and if I’m in a meeting or elsewhere, someone else will answer it – we’re here to help you. If you live in NYC or are visiting, come by the office and visit: you can meet the team that is building the product you love.

I think there are a couple of things to keep in mind when using a personal finance site online (be it Thrive, Wesabe, or any of the dozen other options), and many have been reviewed in these comments. I’m going to try to address a few as well, but keep in mind I can only speak for Thrive – Mint (and likely does) operate their security differently.

Thrive, like Mint, uses Yodlee for our back end aggregation. A couple of people have expressed concerns about what gets passed back and forth and how secure the encryption is. In general, I like to explain the data transfer in terms of the credit card statement you get in the mail: that’s the kind of information that goes back and forth between Thrive and Yodlee. When you first sign up, we established a secure connection between Thrive, Yodlee, and your bank. After that, Thrive does not store your username, password, or an account number, just a random string of characters that is your userid. Yodlee sends us a statement of your transactions and we match that up with your userid.

So in reality, what is getting passed is substantially less than what is on the bank statement you get in the mail. Mail statement has your account number (we don’t use that), your name (we don’t pass that), your address (we don’t pass that), etc.

So there are two data-loss situations. In one case, you Thrive account credentials are hacked and someone can log in as you. What can they see? Your balances, your transactions, what types of accounts you have, and what banks you use. Damaging information, to be sure. But they don’t have your bank passwords or logins, they can’t change anything at your bank or move any money around. They can only view some sensitive information about you, which they could get straight from your mailbox – it is the same information on any paper statement you receive.

The other data-loss situation is a hacking of our servers, not just your account. The same information is available, but on a vastly larger number of people.

I’m not suggesting that there is no security risk and that people shouldn’t be wary: as I said before, being cautious with your info makes you a good consumer. Everyone has to choose for themselves, based on the positives and negatives, of joining a site like Thrive. And honestly, if someone understands all the considerations and still chooses not to use Thrive, we’re totally fine with that – it isn’t for everyone and some people are less comfortable than others. I simply care that people understand what they are and aren’t making accessible by using such a site, and all the things they stand to gain.

really? So bad things DON’T happen to good people after all?

it wasn’t true when FDR said and its still not.

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