Is Monzo requiring access to contacts for joint account opening / Monzo.me necessary & secure?

Whilst I’m not disagreeing with you as such, what would be the worst thing that could happen if all of your contacts were indeed stolen?

Again, that will depend on who you are and who your contacts are.
If you’re building a bank, you should probably build for as wide a spectrum of people as possible.
Maybe the mindset here is that all monzo users are or should be tech savvy and used to living life online in a very trusting way without much fear of the consequences. Share all your contacts? Oh, I’ve done that loads of times!
In current times, such attitudes are a bit strange.

I guess I hadn’t thought of this part so much, because if you are someone who does have sensitive information, you probably wouldn’t be signing up to a very new digital bank.

Let’s not forget Monzo is in the early stages of a current account, and the joint account is still in a beta stage.

So whilst your points are valid for the long term perhaps, and it’s always good to raise them, I think we are years away from it being a necessity.

Although Monzo have already said the way they open joint accounts will change.

There seem to be a few issues popping up which seem to try and get Monzo to cater for absolutely every situation and circumstance - It’s just not viable right now, and the reality is, if it doesn’t work for you at the moment, it’s probably best to avoid.

That’s not to say it won’t change of course, but there is SO much to develop already, that inevitably, you will need to cater for the wider audience before drilling down into the niche examples.

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Time to install a Faraday cage

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Why would I need to change them if someone knew who my contacts are? Still struggling to see the issue?

There has to be some proportionality to all this, I think.

Unless anyone disagrees, I think we can be reasonably confident that Monzo isn’t a bad actor in all of this - that they aren’t trying to maximise the personal data they collect from us.

So what that leads us to is, I think, three things: firstly is the trade (exchanging contacts for a better user experience) worthwhile? Secondly, is the data protected in a reasonable way? And thirdly, can we be sure that Monzo won’t veer to the dark side in the future? (And third and a halfly, what damage could a hypothetical Evilzo do with the info they have?)

On one and two, I think that Monzo has behaved in a responsible and reasonable way.

There is a wider, societal (if not philosophical) question about data sharing. I was particularly interested by the point that you could potentially do some form of network analysis to determine who knows whom and to potentially deanonymise through what’s known as the mosaic effect. But Monzo can’t do anything about it on their own so, again, it feels kinda academic (even if I do find it fascinating).

On the third point (could Monzo go evil?) - who can tell? At the moment, I’m certainly very impressed by both the culture and ethical stance. But organisations change - and I’m really interested in both how Monzo scales and how it retains its character (this was what I was getting at in my fourth question to Tristan here). I’m not overly worried if Monzo remains independent, but an acquisition would change everything rapidly, I imagine… But point 3.5 - again, I don’t see anything inherently problematic with the data that Monzo collects that could be used for bad, even if Tom is replaced by evil Tom, head of mergers and acquisitions of Evil Corp inc… I mean, I might want to close my account, but I’m not sure I’d worry about the back data held about me too much…

@alexs - I think we’ve gone way off topic here. Could you work your magic? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :mage:

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I wonder how many people out there still have contacts like “Mr Pin”

Or very detailed contact cards with addresses, photos, email etc attached to contacts ?

Again, depends on the individual. Wouldn’t like to describe my own address book :slight_smile:

Starling uses some Google-owned nonsense which requires access to your location and god knows what else. Hardly better. Both approaches are bad.

We’ve solved this problem decades ago - it used to be called something like a pairing PIN for those that remember doing this with Bluetooth. No reason why we couldn’t use the same here.

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Cost/benefit for the individual is not going to be the same as for the group.
Monzo is forcing users to choose one way or the other, even though it’s pretty pointless using contacts in this way anyway. That’s what is so strange.

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For this topic, the summary is quite simple.
Does Monzo use the minimum data necessary to open a joint account? No
Does Starling use the minimum data necessary? Yes, it only needs data about the joint applicants

Therefore, Starling would be the preferred option

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Obviously we disagree about what’s necessary here.

Great, I’m glad you have a resolution for your concerns :slight_smile: whereas others may not share them.

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Monzo’s a really data driven company. I reckon they’ll be looking at the fall out rate for joint account sign ups - if they see a significant number of people dropping out at the stage where they need to share contacts then I’m sure they’ll do something about it.

And we’re still MVP for joint accounts here. I wouldn’t assume that the sign up process is final!

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Exactly :popcorn:

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:eyes:

I really don’t see the problem tbh. If all my contacts were stolen, it honestly wouldn’t affect me. I don’t think it would affect them much either. Maybe some spam calls, but you already get that. I’m not FBI or any high-profile individual (you would have a separate work phone) and all my messages are mostly on Facebook messenger or Instagram. I only actively use 4-5 contacts. I’ve been friends with people for years and have never needed their phone number (or if I did, a web call would suffice).
But I understand that this may be a concern for some so if this is so off-putting that lots of people aren’t signing up to a joint account because of this, then maybe Monzo might have a workaround.

I don’t think it would affect them much either

Did you actually ask them? Maybe they have a different opinion.

Maybe some spam calls, but you already get that

I don’t and I like to keep it that way. :wink:

if this is so off-putting that lots of people aren’t signing up to a joint account because of this

The problem is that it isn’t off-putting enough to be visible in Monzo’s stats (because most people will still choose to share them just to get their joint account open, as there is no alternative option) but it sets a precedent that I don’t think should be set. Back 10 years ago it would be a scandal if an app required access to your contacts, and now thanks to this kind of behaviour (from Monzo and other apps forcing you to share your contacts) it’s becoming the new normal.

By the way, I say that as someone who happily shares his contacts with :monzo: so I definitely trust them (for now), but I want this to always remain an opt-in choice and not be the new default.

Monzo is a bank - users’ contacts are absolutely none of their business. It isn’t about whether Monzo has nefarious intentions or how secure they keep that data - it should simply not be mandatory to share this data with them in the first place.

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I get why Monzo would sacrifice some contact privacy/security for convenience with joint accounts and pay with friends but why is contacts access needed for the monzo.me website?

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Here’s my guess -

basically any time that Monzo needs to see whether someone you’re interacting with is a Monzo user & someone you know, they need access to your contacts.

They could use the BIN number instead. It’s more reliable and doesn’t require access.

Plus, requiring you to give up your privacy on the off-chance that they’re using Monzo doesn’t seem like a valid reason.

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