I don't see how that's related at all. I'm not saying Bank of America needs to work hard to prevent automated access to their online banking system. Right now,

I don't see how that's related at all. I'm not saying Bank of America needs to work hard to prevent automated access to their online banking system. Right now, automated access counts as "undocumented behavior" at best. Bank of America is not likely to face public ridicule because someone hacked up an automated interface to their site which was not intended for that purpose and shot themselves in the foot. If, however, Bank of America says explicitally, "Hey, come use this API and applications built off it to access your account," and then one of those applications starts shooting people in the foot, people are going to wonder why Bank of America thought it was a good idea to let people access their accounts like that in the first place.