Is there a way to keep Quicken from snooping?

louabill

Is there some way to tell Quicken to not grab information from my accounts when I'm working?

Currently I make sure I turn off my internet connection whenever I'm working with Quicken, but this is truly a suboptimal solution.

I'm asking again today, because I tried manually putting in a transaction into my retirement account while online, and the not-useful information came up telling how much my account value had changed and was worth as of Friday. So, I can see the snooping live.

I just want to use Quicken as an home accounting program. I use zero of Quicken's features for connecting to bank or investment accounts, so I have no need of connectivity. I'm not interested in sharing my information with them.

I've paid for it over the years, though I have let my account lapse, because some how don't like paying rent to a landlord who also goes through all my closets.

Sadly, I had to put this question iunder Troubleshooting, because there is no privacy category nor is there a privacy tag.

Chris_QPW

louabill said:

I'm asking again today, because I tried manually putting in a transaction into my retirement account while online, and the not-useful information came up telling how much my account value had changed and was worth as of Friday. So, I can see the snooping live.

Can you get a screenshot of the information that came up and post it here (blocking out private information)?

I have never seen any kind of information like you describe coming up from just entering transactions.

louabill

understand Quicken has to check to see if I've paid their rent for the year. I don't use any of Quicken's online services so no accounts have ever been linked. I don't use any mobile services.

I'm using Version 6.9.0 (Build 609.45401.100) under macOS 12.6.1. I have let my subscription lapse, because I'm not interested in most of the new features.

@DocGer:
I normally enter all transactions while offline. I entered one transaction today while online to test whether a bug I see while entering transactions occurs when online (as I know it happens when offline) [1].

When I manually entered the transaction into retirement fund XX while online, the price history of the retirement fund XX got values added by Quicken, and the 'Day Gain/Loss as of mm/dd/yy' changes from a black $0.00 to a non-zero value. This means that Quicken is looking up retirement fund XX, and hence is grabbing information. I'd prefer this not to happen.

If you don't get this automatic price updating, please tell me what the magic setting is. I've not found one in the application preferences or the preferences for the account itself.

@Chris_QPW:

There was no message. It's an update on the account screen in the upper right corner under "Day Gain/Loss as of mm/dd/yy'.

Bill

[1] https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7900175/unable-to-manually-enter-retirement-info-when-not-on-internet-q-mac and https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7923714/still-having-trouble-with-manual-investment-transaction-input

louabill

@DocGer
I guess I'm not being specific enough. I'm manually entering transactions which happened in the past which I'm typically reading off of a transaction report from the company which holds my retirement funds.

When I manually enter a reinvested dividend from 2 months ago, of course Quicken computes the price at the time for that transaction. It also adds the prices for the last week or so to my file. This means it has to be looking up the ticker symbol.

Perhaps I should replace all the ticker symbols with nonsense ticker symbols.

jacobs

@louabill If you are not using Quicken for downloading transactions, and you don't want security prices to download, simply change the ticker symbols for your securities to non-existent ones (such as just pasting the security name into the symbol field). This will prevent Quicken from puling in data for the security. 

louabill

@jacobs, @DocGer: Thanks for the info. Still, it would be nice to tell Quicken "Please do not do anything I don't explicitly ask for, as I don't want you looking over my shoulder.".

jacobs

@louabill Quicken is built to be used with online services. That's just what most people want and expect. But if you want to use it without it doing things online, you can -- you just have to disable them properly. It's a one-time thing to set up, so if that's you preference, disconnect your securities from downloading price updates, and you'll be set. (Also make sure Sync is turned off in Preferences > Mobile Web & Alerts; if it is on, turn it off, and then go to Preferences > Connected Services and reset your cloud file.)

I personally enter my transactions manually, and have no online sync, but I allow Quicken to download security prices because that saves time and is generally not error-prone.