Quicken Uploaded Data Despite Cloud Sync Off - How to Delete?

Toolworker

I restored an old qdata from BACKUP. When I opened it, a sync window flashed and it said something about uploading bank accounts to the cloud. My Mobile & Web preference shows sync turned off, and the Quicken ID & Cloud preference shows no cloud account.

What was it uploading and why?

And how do I make sure any uploaded data is deleted?

Boatnmaniac

Toolworker said:

I restored an old qdata from BACKUP. When I opened it, a sync window flashed and it said something about uploading bank accounts to the cloud. My Mobile & Web preference shows sync turned off, and the Quicken ID & Cloud preference shows no cloud account.

What was it uploading and why?

The Cloud Account is commonly misunderstood.  Everyone who has Quicken Subscription and later editions of pre-subscription Quicken has a Cloud Account associated with their data files and Quicken ID.  By default and of necessity your Quicken installation and data file will communicate with your Cloud Account mostly regarding subscription details (license, Edition, status, version status & updates availability, Quicken ID & PW, etc.).  But there is no financial information involved.

This starts to change as we add various online services.  For instance, if you have any Express Web Connect and Express Web Connect+ accounts your bank information, bank login information, account balances and account transactions are saved on the Quicken aggregator's (Intuit) server.  The aggregator connects with those financial institutions at night and saves the downloaded data on their server where it waits for us to run OSU or Update Now to download it into Quicken.  I'm thinking (not sure so I could be mistaken about this) that if you use Quicken's Bill Manager there is also some of that information saved on the server.  How does all this get communicated?  Via the Cloud Account.

If you do not wish for this EWC/EWC+ information to be saved on the aggregator's server then you need to change the connection method to Direct Connect or Web Connect (manually downloading).  However, not all financial institutions support these methods.  Your other options are to then deactivate the account(s) in question and manually update those accounts or to download from the financial institutions in another format (like Excel, CSV or OSF) and use a program like ImportQIF to convert that file into something that can then be imported into Quicken.  (ImportQIF is a freeware program you can read up on and download from https://www.quicknperlwiz.com/.  It was developed by a long-time Quicken user and active participant in this Community forum.)

You can read more about the various connection methods used by Quicken in the follow Support Article: https://www.quicken.com/support/how-quicken-connects-your-bank.  Pay special attention to the "EWC" information in it.

Regarding the preference for Sync:  This is a preference for Quicken Mobile and Quicken on the Web that turns Sync on or off only for these two functions.  This Sync preference does not apply to anything else regarding Quicken.

When you restore a backup file it will have data in it that is different (older) than what is recorded in your Cloud Account.  Quicken will attempt to sync that Cloud Account to your data file so they can work together and that will be done by uploading data (as mentioned above) from your data file to your Cloud Account.  Otherwise, your restored data file might not be fully usable.

Boatnmaniac

Toolworker said:

And how do I make sure any uploaded data is deleted?

To delete uploaded data from your Cloud Account you will need to delete the Cloud Account.  You can read up on that process here: How to edit or delete your Cloud datasets in Quicken for Windows [Support Article]

Note that the next time you open your Quicken data file it will recreate the Cloud Account per the configurations and online services you have it set up for.  So, unless you made online services changes to your data file it will create a new Cloud Account that is pretty much identical to the one that was deleted.  IMO, the biggest values of deleting the Cloud Account are:

•  When there has been a substantive change to the online services that you are using, such as discontinuing use of Mobile or Web or deactivating accounts with EWC/EWC+ connections.  After you make those changes you can delete the Cloud Account to be sure that when it is recreated it will not include data for the online services that were discontinued.
• Every once in a while the Cloud Account (especially with regard to Mobile and Web) will get out of sync with the data file.  Deleting and recreating the Cloud Account can resolve that issue.

Boatnmaniac

Toolworker said:

> @Boatnmaniac said:
> For instance, if you have any Express Web Connect and Express Web Connect+ accounts your bank information, bank login information, account balances and account transactions are saved on the Quicken aggregator's (Intuit) server.  ...
> If you do not wish for this EWC/EWC+ information to be saved on the aggregator's server then you need to change the connection method to Direct Connect or Web Connect (manually downloading).  However, not all financial institutions support these methods. 

Wow - thanks for this eye-opener. So when Bank of America switched from Direct Connect to Express Web Connect+, and demanded permission to share a huge list of personal data (for example, my tax information), that enabled all this stuff to be stored on Intuit's servers.

Someone else recently posted a picture of BofA's list of data that he got during the reauthorization setup process for EWC+.  He was nervous about how much personal data BofA will provide to Quicken.  But to me it just looked like a boiler plate template of the types of data that could be provided if Quicken were to request it.  And as has been noted, Quicken only requests data that is needed for Quicken software to function properly.  But there might be other 3rd party softwares (not related to Quicken) that will want or need other types of data to be downloaded so a boilerplate template like this could be used with all of them.

As for me, I'm not too concerned about some of my confidential Quicken data being on Intuit's servers.  Intuit owns TurboTax, QuickBooks, Credit Karma, Mint and a ton of other financial data companies (including Quicken until 2016).  In my mind they have proven long ago they know how to safeguard customers' confidential data quite well.  If we don't trust Intuit to safeguard our Quicken data then we probably should not be using any of Intuit's other businesses and products, either.

AfricanSwallow

I've been manually deleting the Cloud versions of scanned documents (attachments) for some time now, but I haven't had the time to post about it (I just found the 2022 paycheck problem, have spent DAYS effectively reentering paychecks and deleting duplicate transactions from related accounts). Thanks for your post, @Toolworker.

My two cents worth: in 2023, if Quicken (or anyone else) is uploading your personal data to the Cloud, that's worse than unethical. It should be a felony - EVEN IF permission is buried in the fine print of a licensing agreement. Allowing ANYONE to upload YOUR data should require a 3-day waiting period and training - like for purchasing a firearm - because allowing anyone to upload your data is as dangerous to your long-term livelihood as having a loaded pistol laying around in plain sight.

Boatnmaniac

Toolworker said:

I restored an old qdata from BACKUP. When I opened it, a sync window flashed and it said something about uploading bank accounts to the cloud. My Mobile & Web preference shows sync turned off, and the Quicken ID & Cloud preference shows no cloud account.

What was it uploading and why?

The Cloud Account is commonly misunderstood.  Everyone who has Quicken Subscription and later editions of pre-subscription Quicken has a Cloud Account associated with their data files and Quicken ID.  By default and of necessity your Quicken installation and data file will communicate with your Cloud Account mostly regarding subscription details (license, Edition, status, version status & updates availability, Quicken ID & PW, etc.).  But there is no financial information involved.

This starts to change as we add various online services.  For instance, if you have any Express Web Connect and Express Web Connect+ accounts your bank information, bank login information, account balances and account transactions are saved on the Quicken aggregator's (Intuit) server.  The aggregator connects with those financial institutions at night and saves the downloaded data on their server where it waits for us to run OSU or Update Now to download it into Quicken.  I'm thinking (not sure so I could be mistaken about this) that if you use Quicken's Bill Manager there is also some of that information saved on the server.  How does all this get communicated?  Via the Cloud Account.

If you do not wish for this EWC/EWC+ information to be saved on the aggregator's server then you need to change the connection method to Direct Connect or Web Connect (manually downloading).  However, not all financial institutions support these methods.  Your other options are to then deactivate the account(s) in question and manually update those accounts or to download from the financial institutions in another format (like Excel, CSV or OSF) and use a program like ImportQIF to convert that file into something that can then be imported into Quicken.  (ImportQIF is a freeware program you can read up on and download from https://www.quicknperlwiz.com/.  It was developed by a long-time Quicken user and active participant in this Community forum.)

You can read more about the various connection methods used by Quicken in the follow Support Article: https://www.quicken.com/support/how-quicken-connects-your-bank.  Pay special attention to the "EWC" information in it.

Regarding the preference for Sync:  This is a preference for Quicken Mobile and Quicken on the Web that turns Sync on or off only for these two functions.  This Sync preference does not apply to anything else regarding Quicken.

When you restore a backup file it will have data in it that is different (older) than what is recorded in your Cloud Account.  Quicken will attempt to sync that Cloud Account to your data file so they can work together and that will be done by uploading data (as mentioned above) from your data file to your Cloud Account.  Otherwise, your restored data file might not be fully usable.

Boatnmaniac

Toolworker said:

And how do I make sure any uploaded data is deleted?

To delete uploaded data from your Cloud Account you will need to delete the Cloud Account.  You can read up on that process here: How to edit or delete your Cloud datasets in Quicken for Windows [Support Article]

Note that the next time you open your Quicken data file it will recreate the Cloud Account per the configurations and online services you have it set up for.  So, unless you made online services changes to your data file it will create a new Cloud Account that is pretty much identical to the one that was deleted.  IMO, the biggest values of deleting the Cloud Account are:

•  When there has been a substantive change to the online services that you are using, such as discontinuing use of Mobile or Web or deactivating accounts with EWC/EWC+ connections.  After you make those changes you can delete the Cloud Account to be sure that when it is recreated it will not include data for the online services that were discontinued.
• Every once in a while the Cloud Account (especially with regard to Mobile and Web) will get out of sync with the data file.  Deleting and recreating the Cloud Account can resolve that issue.

Toolworker

> @Boatnmaniac said:
> For instance, if you have any Express Web Connect and Express Web Connect+ accounts your bank information, bank login information, account balances and account transactions are saved on the Quicken aggregator's (Intuit) server.  ...
> If you do not wish for this EWC/EWC+ information to be saved on the aggregator's server then you need to change the connection method to Direct Connect or Web Connect (manually downloading).  However, not all financial institutions support these methods. 

Wow - thanks for this eye-opener. So when Bank of America switched from Direct Connect to Express Web Connect+, and demanded permission to share a huge list of personal data (for example, my tax information), that enabled all this stuff to be stored on Intuit's servers.

https://www.quicken.com/support/how-quicken-protects-financial-information says "Your information is confidential and is not used for anything other than providing and maintaining the One Step Update service." I wonder if there's anything in Intuit's privacy policy that either supports or supersedes this.

In any event, as a California resident I was able to go to https://www.quicken.com/privacy/us/ccpa/opt-out and prohibit Quicken from selling (including many ways of sharing for commercial purposes) my personal information. Unlike some other opt-out procedures that require phoning, mailing or filling out forms, all I had to do was sign in with my Quicken ID, to which my opt-out preference is now linked.

Thanks, @Boatnmaniac .

Chris_QPW

Frankly, I don't think the California law adds anything to the "protection".  You will notice that it is all about "personal information".  If you look that up, you will find that it is information that can identify you, which Quicken Inc already said it doesn't share, with the exception of what it needed to provide the services that you have requested.  Which is exactly what the law says about the exception of sharing your personal information.

Note that storing your transactions and attachments in the Quicken Cloud dataset (and the transactions on the Intuit server) are considered required to provide the service of downloading the transactions.

mshiggins

Chris_QPW said:

Frankly, I don't think the California law adds anything to the "protection".  You will notice that it is all about "personal information".  If you look that up, you will find that it is information that can identify you, which Quicken Inc already said it doesn't share, with the exception of what it needed to provide the services that you have requested.  Which is exactly what the law says about the exception of sharing your personal information.

Note that storing your transactions and attachments in the Quicken Cloud dataset (and the transactions on the Intuit server) are considered required to provide the service of downloading the transactions.

So the only way to truly “opt out” is to not use EWC or EWC+ and not enable cloud sync. Even then, when you restore from a backup, it will sync your data to the cloud. It will also sync attachments to the cloud whether you want to or not. 

Chris_QPW

mshiggins said:

Chris_QPW said:

Frankly, I don't think the California law adds anything to the "protection".  You will notice that it is all about "personal information".  If you look that up, you will find that it is information that can identify you, which Quicken Inc already said it doesn't share, with the exception of what it needed to provide the services that you have requested.  Which is exactly what the law says about the exception of sharing your personal information.

Note that storing your transactions and attachments in the Quicken Cloud dataset (and the transactions on the Intuit server) are considered required to provide the service of downloading the transactions.

Even then, when you restore from a backup, it will sync your data to the cloud. 

It isn't entirely clear to me exactly what will be synced to the cloud when using Quicken's restore.  Certainly, if you are using Express Web Connect/Express Web Connect + it will involve transactions, but it isn't clear that is the case for Direct Connect, and I would think not.  But note that the Quicken Cloud dataset holds a lot more than just transaction data, so it can certainly be syncing other "things".

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7882641/qcs-express-web-connect-is-cloud-sync

Boatnmaniac

Toolworker said:

> @Boatnmaniac said:
> For instance, if you have any Express Web Connect and Express Web Connect+ accounts your bank information, bank login information, account balances and account transactions are saved on the Quicken aggregator's (Intuit) server.  ...
> If you do not wish for this EWC/EWC+ information to be saved on the aggregator's server then you need to change the connection method to Direct Connect or Web Connect (manually downloading).  However, not all financial institutions support these methods. 

Wow - thanks for this eye-opener. So when Bank of America switched from Direct Connect to Express Web Connect+, and demanded permission to share a huge list of personal data (for example, my tax information), that enabled all this stuff to be stored on Intuit's servers.

Someone else recently posted a picture of BofA's list of data that he got during the reauthorization setup process for EWC+.  He was nervous about how much personal data BofA will provide to Quicken.  But to me it just looked like a boiler plate template of the types of data that could be provided if Quicken were to request it.  And as has been noted, Quicken only requests data that is needed for Quicken software to function properly.  But there might be other 3rd party softwares (not related to Quicken) that will want or need other types of data to be downloaded so a boilerplate template like this could be used with all of them.

As for me, I'm not too concerned about some of my confidential Quicken data being on Intuit's servers.  Intuit owns TurboTax, QuickBooks, Credit Karma, Mint and a ton of other financial data companies (including Quicken until 2016).  In my mind they have proven long ago they know how to safeguard customers' confidential data quite well.  If we don't trust Intuit to safeguard our Quicken data then we probably should not be using any of Intuit's other businesses and products, either.

mtn_living

Boatnmaniac said:

Toolworker said:

> @Boatnmaniac said:
> For instance, if you have any Express Web Connect and Express Web Connect+ accounts your bank information, bank login information, account balances and account transactions are saved on the Quicken aggregator's (Intuit) server.  ...
> If you do not wish for this EWC/EWC+ information to be saved on the aggregator's server then you need to change the connection method to Direct Connect or Web Connect (manually downloading).  However, not all financial institutions support these methods. 

Wow - thanks for this eye-opener. So when Bank of America switched from Direct Connect to Express Web Connect+, and demanded permission to share a huge list of personal data (for example, my tax information), that enabled all this stuff to be stored on Intuit's servers.

Someone else recently posted a picture of BofA's list of data that he got during the reauthorization setup process for EWC+.  He was nervous about how much personal data BofA will provide to Quicken.  But to me it just looked like a boiler plate template of the types of data that could be provided if Quicken were to request it.  And as has been noted, Quicken only requests data that is needed for Quicken software to function properly.  But there might be other 3rd party softwares (not related to Quicken) that will want or need other types of data to be downloaded so a boilerplate template like this could be used with all of them.

As for me, I'm not too concerned about some of my confidential Quicken data being on Intuit's servers.  Intuit owns TurboTax, QuickBooks, Credit Karma, Mint and a ton of other financial data companies (including Quicken until 2016).  In my mind they have proven long ago they know how to safeguard customers' confidential data quite well.  If we don't trust Intuit to safeguard our Quicken data then we probably should not be using any of Intuit's other businesses and products, either.

Intuit does not own Quicken. Quicken is owned by a private capital fund. Intuit divested Quicken years ago.

Boatnmaniac

mtn_living said:

Boatnmaniac said:

Toolworker said:

> @Boatnmaniac said:
> For instance, if you have any Express Web Connect and Express Web Connect+ accounts your bank information, bank login information, account balances and account transactions are saved on the Quicken aggregator's (Intuit) server.  ...
> If you do not wish for this EWC/EWC+ information to be saved on the aggregator's server then you need to change the connection method to Direct Connect or Web Connect (manually downloading).  However, not all financial institutions support these methods. 

Wow - thanks for this eye-opener. So when Bank of America switched from Direct Connect to Express Web Connect+, and demanded permission to share a huge list of personal data (for example, my tax information), that enabled all this stuff to be stored on Intuit's servers.

Someone else recently posted a picture of BofA's list of data that he got during the reauthorization setup process for EWC+.  He was nervous about how much personal data BofA will provide to Quicken.  But to me it just looked like a boiler plate template of the types of data that could be provided if Quicken were to request it.  And as has been noted, Quicken only requests data that is needed for Quicken software to function properly.  But there might be other 3rd party softwares (not related to Quicken) that will want or need other types of data to be downloaded so a boilerplate template like this could be used with all of them.

As for me, I'm not too concerned about some of my confidential Quicken data being on Intuit's servers.  Intuit owns TurboTax, QuickBooks, Credit Karma, Mint and a ton of other financial data companies (including Quicken until 2016).  In my mind they have proven long ago they know how to safeguard customers' confidential data quite well.  If we don't trust Intuit to safeguard our Quicken data then we probably should not be using any of Intuit's other businesses and products, either.

Intuit does not own Quicken. Quicken is owned by a private capital fund. Intuit divested Quicken years ago.

I didn't say Intuit owns Quicken.  I did say Quicken owned Quicken "until 2016".

But Intuit and Quicken are still tied together at the hip in so many ways.  Without Intuit we would not be able to download anything from any Financial Institution into Quicken, regardless of which Quicken connection method is used.  And if you look at that link I'd posted above regarding connection methods used by Quicken you will see that EWC/EWC+ downloaded data and login information for the Financial Institutions are saved on Quicken's aggregator server.  Quicken's aggregator is Intuit.