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PaperclipPerfector  25d ago (text post)   2849 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 27, 2024

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This is where I’m not so sure. Current iterations as far as I can tell generally use “Oauth” which again is a bit of a black box but from what I can tell you’re logging into your bank and giving plaid an access token, which I think can be configured to be read only. Although more black box. In practice, plaid doesn’t have your password generally (although maybe for some banks as your link discusses.) what it can do with that token (is it read only?) is even read only bad enough? Etc. is up for debate.

Current iterations as far as I can tell generally use “Oauth” … In practice, plaid doesn’t have your password generally (although maybe for some banks as your link discusses.)

I've never heard any reports of this. Are you saying you've seen some bank for which Plaid supports OAuth rather than merely doing screen-scraping? If so, what bank is that?

“Oauth” which again is a bit of a black box … what it can do with that token (is it read only?) is even read only bad enough? Etc. is up for debate.

It really shouldn't be “up for debate”.

If your bank supports OAuth as a protocol, but doesn't tell you exactly what authorizations you're granting the relying party when you approve a request, that's a massive failure of your bank, and arguably a violation of at least the spirit of the OAuth spec:

If the request is valid, the authorization server authenticates the resource owner and obtains an authorization decision (by asking the resource owner or by establishing approval via other means) … If the resource owner grants the access request, the authorization server issues an authorization code and delivers it to the client …

The last time I was faced with a plaid page, they wanted me to enter my password in a plaid page, rather than my bank's page. Perhaps this has changed, but there's simply no way that I'd trust plaid not to retain my password in some regarded way.

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