I have been looking for a financial programme which can monitor my finances. I have now downloaded Microsoft Money Sunset (whatever that means), it has now invited me to enter my bank log in details.
How secure is this?
At the risk of stating the obvious, if I want it to monitor my bank accounts and other financial arrangements, I must allow it to have access to the those accounts.
Am I right to be wary?
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As far as I am aware Microsoft Money has been discontinued, but there is an American sunset version. However it is American and doesn't support UK formats.
So while I don't think it is anything to worry about, I would be weary. Where did you download it from?
Last edited by: RattleandSmoke on Fri 15 Mar 13 at 15:11
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Sunset was the last version allowing everybody to maintain their data without having to worry about licencing.
www.microsoft.com/en-gb/athome/microsoft-money.aspx
Whilst you are always correct to be wary, I wouldn't worry unduly in this case provided that you feel your PC is reasonably secure. And I mean the actual PC itself as much as any electronic access.
You can stop it storing any passwords, and within reason the username won't help much.
Bear in mind though, that a burglar to your house can steal your PC. He would then have access to anything you haven't protected.
For the individual, ignoring those who give their information willingly to scams, the physical risk is higher than the electronic one.
We all worry about passwords and security between our information and the internet, but how many of you have the security between your own keyboard and your information sorted?
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I have been using this program for 15 years. I have never felt it necessary for it to have my bank details. I manually enter my bank tractions and use my bank statement to reconcile it.
I did get rather concerned when I changed from XP to W7 in case my 2004 version wouldn't run, but had no problems.
As someone said above, the Sunset version is American and may or may not work as you want.
Why not try eBay for a UK version?
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There is a patch to make Money 2004 work with modern versions of Windows. My parents are happily using it on Windows 8, but I remember it was a right faff to get it working.
The problem is Microsoft have officialy discontinued the patch. Again my parents don't use online banking with it, they just log onto the banks website to do all that.
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I have been a long time user of Microsoft Money and use it for all my accounts.
A free copy of the UK version of Money 2005 can be downloaded from Microsoft here:-
tinyurl.com/bstxklw
It works with XP, Vista, Win 7 and, I believe, Win 8.
There are very few UK banks that interact with Money directly. Check your bank will interact before entering your details. I'm trying to remember how you can check - will report back if I find out.
Last edited by: Arctophile on Fri 15 Mar 13 at 20:45
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As others have said the Sunset editions of Money are intended for US users and are not recommended for UK use. The original US versions required online activation. When Microsoft switched off the activation servers there was no way for customers to reload their copy of Money. The Sunset editions were produced to allow customers to reload the programme without activation.
Similarly, the 2005 UK edition needed a downloaded patch to work. The version that I linked to above was produced to avoid the need for a patch after the servers were switched off. It happily loaded onto my Win 7 PC and imported & converted my Money 2000 data file.
After checking, I now do not believe that any UK banks interact directly with Money. I used to manage it with the Woolwich but they stopped about ten years ago, before they were taken over by Barclays.
Like others I now find it easier to enter all transactions manually and have not entered bank usernames or passwords.
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I've been using the 2002 version on OSs up to Win8, although since Win7 I've had to cancel the Money Express option which activates at startup (which I never used anyway) as it was causing subsequent file loading problems. Also now they seemed to have discontinued the currency updates.
Last edited by: lancara on Sat 16 Mar 13 at 01:24
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If you just want something to track your accounts I reckon Quicken is far easier to use than Money, it's what I've used for the last fifteen years or so. That too is no longer supported in the UK but you can get it quite cheaply from the States on ebay.
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Microsoft Money - RattleandSmoke
