I had the a similar response to being required to use Plaid in order to try Robinhood. And by "required" I mean that they said "this is required" and I decline

I had the a similar response to being required to use Plaid in order to try Robinhood. And by "required" I mean that they said "this is required" and I declined to everything without looking back. My response did not have quite the level of eloquence and wisdom as the OP's: "What the actual fuck!" They actually asked for my private bank account information, that which is for me alone to know, that the bank explicitly told me not to share. It's a highly literal form of spilling my guts to share this, it's so so bad. Like literally I was talking to a psychiatrist at one point (I am open about having ADD, and treating it requires seeing a psychiatrist), and I mentioned a friend I didn't want to talk about. This doctor started to pry, but he couldn't get anywhere with his line of questioning. I just told him it was private and that's it. And then to illustrate my point I told him it was like he was asking for my bank account number. And he didn't drop it fast enough, it was pretty comical, for about a second this doctor was visibly curious about my bank account number. Like if you ask people this it means you want to steal from them obviously, it is stealing. Plaid was caught stealing, but not explicitly, like they knew they'd be in shit up to their lower eyelid if the embezzled from their users, and that further it would destroy their industry, but I divine that they totally considered it in private. Not even saying it was brought up in a meeting, it's that touchy, but it's just too obvious they were putting themselves in a position to steal. That's not what their idealistic-sounding public-facing business plan is, like I won't have anything to do with them but I imagine it is about democratizing banking. In fact it is about democratizing each user's personal banking information. And sure enough, this start-up scraped the data in the bank accounts and sold it. They got a great price for that, I can tell you that right now, data is most valuable when its collected nonconsensually. It tells them what people bought, at what exact time, where, with what means, basically how much they're willing to pay, and on top of that how much money they have in the bank, which allows the data buyers like car dealerships and hospitals to charge them 100% of what they're able to pay. That means you're left with nothing. If the hospital, boss, landlord, and salesman can see invade your privacy, you will be left with nothing. Literally means being forced to play poker with your hand revealed. Bank robbers.