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Managing Money With Linux Apps
lisah writes, "As part of a series of special reports this week, Linux.com is reviewing several ways to manage your money using Linux apps. First up is a review of GnuCash 2.0, a personal and small business accounting package. Though it has a bit of a learning curve, the reviewer says the application is 'stable and robust' and an upgrade from previous versions is well worth it for the program's new features and improved online banking support." Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.
This must me an American thing, because the Dutch banks have never supported automatic downloading into 3rd party apps (as far as i know). Most banks support exporting of account data in Quicken or CSV format, but that's not always very useful, and it's still a manual process. I usually just type data in manually, which is also a good way to force me to check the input.
When using MS Money it always annoyed me (just a little) to see that feature and not be able to use it, but I understand the security aspect of that decision. Allowing an app to pull data of this level of sensitivity with just a password from a bank's website is just not secure enough. In my opinion, that kind of data should be protected by at least Two-factor Authentication. My bank demands the combination of a pincode (something you know), a bankcard (something you have) and a hardware token (also something you have), which is considered strong authentication.