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These Personal Finance Apps Steal Your Data

By
Natalie Fell
November 21, 2023

Who's ready for some Black Friday deals? 🛍️ As soon as you finish off that last piece of pumpkin pie, it's time to lace up those sneaks and hit the retail trail. 👟🥧 Gotta be first in line to get that Tickle Me Elmo! 

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If you like to plan ahead, you might rely on a trusty personal finance app to keep your budget in order. 📲 However, some of these apps are pretty sneaky and collect a ton of personal data. If you're not paying attention, you could be sharing a lot more than you bargained for. 🕵️ Black Friday pun intended.

 

Here’s Five Fast Facts on finance apps that steal your data:

  1. 🔎 Under the Radar - Back in September, researchers looked at 204 personal finance apps. They found that the average app requested 20 separate types of data. Much of the info collected is necessary for the apps to function properly, but in many cases, companies use the data for marketing and customer profiling.

  2. 🚨 Robin My Data - The worst offender? The Robinhood: Investing for All app. It collects 25 types of data from users.
  1. 🛒 Get Your Groupon - Up next on the list are PayPal (the Send, Shop, Manage and Pay in 4 programs), Klarna, and Groupon. These guys collect 21 or more unique data points on consumers.
  1. 💲 Bank On It - Even some of today's most respected banking apps are data-hungry. Chime Mobile Banking and Chase Mobile collected 23 and 20 categories of data, respectively. Virgin Mobile Banking in the UK also scored high on the list.
  1. 😅 In the Clear - Looking for some safe bets? The apps GO2Bank, RetailMeNot (Coupons, Cashback), and FreshBooks Accounting only collect two kinds of user data. 

🔥Bottom line: When apps collect your personal data, it sometimes goes beyond your location, gender, and birthday. Many apps also collect your browsing and search history, health and fitness data, and contact information. If you like to keep things close to the vest, make sure you're reading an app's privacy policy before you hit download. Play it safe and know what you're getting into!

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Do you use any of these personal finance apps?

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