Please explain: Why Quicken Classic is "stealth stealing" a copy of user's personal financial data

DevNull

😡 Quicken Classis R53.16, Windows 11/10/7

In as few words as possible:

• When did this abhorrent behavior and breach of user trust start, i.e. which Release?
• Why does Quicken automatically upload my private financial data without user permission?
• Why does Quicken block the user from blocking Quicken from stealing the user's personal and private financial data?

I am aware you can go to: Edit —> Preferences —> Quicken ID & Cloud Accounts —> Edit data - to rename and delete all but one file.

However, it re-uploads any time you access, i.e. open, a QDF file. Also seems as though it "scanned" drives and/or folders for files that were not accessed by the user. (have not performed extensive testing on the "scanning" behavior yet)

jacobs

@DevNull I think you perhaps have some misunderstandings about how Quicken works.

If you don't choose to use the Quicken mobile app or web interface, you can set Quicken Cloud to not sync any of your desktop data to its cloud servers. (And if that data currently exists, you can delete it and, with sync to Quicken Cloud disabled, prevent it from being uploaded again.) On the other hand, if you want to use either the mobile app or web interface, that requires Quicken to store a copy of some of your data in its cloud servers in order for those services to work. There's nothing stealthy or abhorrent about that.

The next layer is how you connect to your financial institutions. If you choose not to connect your accounts for downloading, and enter everything manually, then none of that data is uploaded to Quicken's cloud servers — and some Quicken users operate this way. If you want to download your transactions, as most Quicken users do, then it depends on the connection methods your financial institutions offer. If your financial institutions utilize Direct Connect, the data flows between the financial institutions server and your desktop Quicken, and isn't store in Quicken's cloud servers. If your financial institutions utilize Express Web Connect (EWC and EWC+) for Windows, or Quicken Connect for Mac, then this is an aggregation service where data flows from your financial institutions to a Quicken server to your desktop data file. There's nothing stealthy or abhorrent about that, either; it's how Quicken has worked since connectivity was invented decades ago.

Why does Quicken automatically upload my private financial data  without user permission?

Have you read Quicken's Terms of Use? You agreed to these Terms of Use (formerly called the End User License Agreement, listed here going back to 2003) when you first registered Quicken or your Quicken subscription. There's lots of legalese in them, but it includes statements like this: " In order to provide full Product and Service functionality, we must have access to the Content that you store or process using a Product or Service. You grant us, our Suppliers, and each of our affiliates permission to collect, send, receive, process, store, alter, and create new information based on your Content, Credentials, and other information."

P.S. Please understand that this is a community forum, with mostly fellow Quicken users here, along with a few Quicken moderators who keep things organized and answer some questions. But you're not talking to Quicken executives here, so if you're looking for explanations about why policies are the way they are, no one here can answer; if you're looking to understand what data Quicken uses and how you can control that, then hopefully fellow users can help and you'll get some helpful responses here.