Hi all,

In the past, Quicken did just what I wanted: functioned as an accounting program. I've never been interested in having Intuit see what bills I pay or see what I have in my retirement accounts. Starting about 2 years ago, Quicken insisted on calling home to update security prices, so in true paranoid data-gatherer-hatred style, I would turn off my Wifi connection whenever using Quicken.

This worked pretty well until earlier this year. Now it is impossible to add any transactions to so-called investment [1] accounts when offline. I reported this on the community forums and spent 2 long, painful chat sessions with the Quicken help desk until the helpdesk finally said that Quicken has to call home for 'data validity'. Hah.

Anyways, I've tried using /etc/conf to block the calls home, which didn't work (I'm not great with /etc/conf).

I tried Little Snitch, and found what outgoing requests needed to be blocked, those to
qm.quicken.com
investing.quicken.com
So... I can stay online AND keep Intuit from sniffing around.

Anyways, before I plunk down the money for Little Snitch,
has anyone used it and liked it?
has anyone used it and found it caused problems?
does anyone know of a reliable free way to get Intuit to mind its own business (there are some shareware/freeware things which aren't likely as nice as Little Snitch, but I haven't tried them yet).

Thanks for any tips, even if they are of simple accounting programs without the rent and bloat of Quicken.

Cheers,

Bill
[1] Correct term: speculation.

Thanks Bill, anxious to see what others say

John

开云体育

On Sep 28, 2023, at 1:12?PM, Bill Rising via groups.io <brising@...> wrote:

开云体育

On Sep 28, 2023, at 1:39?PM, John Robinson via groups.io <profilecovenant@...> wrote:

I am not a big fan of Intuit, either.

I often criticized the late Bill Campbell, who went from CEO of Claris to Apple board member to CEO of Intuit. He was ON Apple’s BOARD when he was CEO and later chairman at Intuit when they couldn’t get a decent version of QuickBooks out for the Mac. They had one for a while, but it was so flawed to be practically useless.

Can you imagine how many unit sales that cost Apple during those years? People HAD to buy Windows computers in order to use Quickbooks (the de facto small business standard), which had an influence on all other computer purchases in a company.

That sounds to me like a serious failure of fiduciary responsibility. I used to write on the stockholder voting form in the section for reelecting the board members, “everyone but Bill Campbell.” Okay it was a jerky moved but I used to own a nice chunk of Apple stock and he was taking money out of my pocket.

Jonathan

On Sep 28, 2023, at 2:16 PM, Lee Larson via groups.io <leelarson@...> wrote:

On Sep 28, 2023, at 1:39?PM, John Robinson via groups.io <profilecovenant@...> wrote:

Thanks for any tips, even if they are of simple accounting programs without the rent and bloat of Quicken.

Oh, I forgot to mention.

We gave up on Quicken a long time ago during Intuit’s Mac-hostile phase and switched to Moneydance. My wife uses it a lot more than I do, often pushing at its boundaries, while managing both our meager fortune and the accounts of her elderly aunts. It has worked well over the years and has the advantage for us of versions on both Mac and Linux. There’s also a feature-poor iOS version we do not use.

There are a couple of problems:

For years, Intuit has been making deals with the money bins to prefer exporting account information in their somewhat proprietary format xxx.QFX instead of the open source xxx.OFX. (Most use both.) The problem here is that as soon the non-Intuit programs learn to reliably input xxx.QFX files, Intuit has a history of making a small change in their format to mess up everybody but Quicken. Moneydance will import xxx.OFX and xxx.QFX.

There are two versions: Moneydance and Moneydance Plus. The latter has some features most people will find necessary. The publishers of Moneydance have joined the enshittification trend with Moneydance Plus by moving to an annual subscription. Plain Moneydance is still a one-time fee.

L^2

--
Jonathan Fletcher
Workplace Innovation Facilitator
jonathan@...

Kentuckiana FileMaker Developers Group ? Next Meeting: 9/26/23
Register at kyfmp.com/reg/ for a link

Hi Lee,

On Sep 28, 2023, at 13:43, Lee Larson via groups.io <leelarson@...> wrote:

On Sep 28, 2023, at 1:12?PM, Bill Rising via groups.io <brising@...> wrote:

Anyways, before I plunk down the money for Little Snitch,
has anyone used it and liked it?
has anyone used it and found it caused problems?
does anyone know of a reliable free way to get Intuit to mind its own business (there are some shareware/freeware things which aren't likely as nice as Little Snitch, but I haven't tried them yet).

Thanks for any tips, even if they are of simple accounting programs without the rent and bloat of Quicken.

Sounds like you need to mess with your firewall. This means delving into /etc/pf.conf. There are many Web pages about this.

<>
<>
<>

Whoo boy. I looked at these, and have a general idea what to do, but I'll need to piddle for a bit to see if my ability to mimic (not to be confused with understanding) will let me block the two domains I'd like to block. (No hints ... I'm keen to give it a try as a challenge.)

If you’re familiar with TCP Wrappers on Linux, it’s similar—except TCP Wrappers makes a lot more sense to me.

Right now, little makes sense to me, and not just in the computer world ;<).

Little Snitch basically gives a GUI front end for pf. I tried Little Snitch a few years ago and jettisoned it because it was always giving me bothersome alerts with which I had to deal. Maybe I didn’t have the patience to properly set it up. Maybe it’s better now.

LittleSnitch (version 5.7.1) seems to be far less intrusive, now. By default it does and says nothing. I went through the connections from Intuit and Quicken, and found the two I needed to block ... and voilà! I can use Quicken without it calling home to upload info quicken wants and download info I don't need.

Better still, the network filter works for 3 hours on Demo mode and does not get forgotten. Since my tolerance for bookkeeping is under 3 hours at a crack, I can (for now) turn on Demo mode every time I decide to use (fight with?) Quicken.

I'll update once I get something working. That way others may be able to use the info.

Bill

On Sep 28, 2023, at 14:16, Lee Larson via groups.io <leelarson@...> wrote:

On Sep 28, 2023, at 1:39?PM, John Robinson via groups.io <profilecovenant@...> wrote:

Thanks for any tips, even if they are of simple accounting programs without the rent and bloat of Quicken.

Oh, I forgot to mention.

We gave up on Quicken a long time ago during Intuit’s Mac-hostile phase and switched to Moneydance. My wife uses it a lot more than I do, often pushing at its boundaries, while managing both our meager fortune and the accounts of her elderly aunts. It has worked well over the years and has the advantage for us of versions on both Mac and Linux. There’s also a feature-poor iOS version we do not use.

Long ago in another galaxy, I thought I would dump Quicken. More specifically, when Quicken 1997 (or so) stopped working on Mac OS X, I went looking around for an alternative. Moneydance was one, but at the time, it was known to have trouble importing the infernal investment transactions which. Now... as someone who has a bunch of 401(k)/403(b)/IRA/Roth accounts due to having had too many different jobs, and as someone who tried to create his own Retire 2020 blend of things, I have a crapton of transactions. So... I stayed with Quicken.

There are a couple of problems:

For years, Intuit has been making deals with the money bins to prefer exporting account information in their somewhat proprietary format xxx.QFX instead of the open source xxx.OFX. (Most use both.) The problem here is that as soon the non-Intuit programs learn to reliably input xxx.QFX files, Intuit has a history of making a small change in their format to mess up everybody but Quicken. Moneydance will import xxx.OFX and xxx.QFX.

I just looked at Moneydance. Moneydance has a filedance which they say to use (export as Quicken 2007 file, then change the file extension, then import), but they then say that this dance will not import investment transactions properly. I've also seen claims that using QFX will not import categories, which would mean a large chunk of the 10's of thousands of entries would need to be massaged by hand. When I looked at another application (Moneyspire), they talked about how hard it was to import Quicken data properly.

So... Quicken has become a Roach Motel for Finances: The data go in, but they cannot come out.

This is wicked annoying and really should be outlawed.

I guess I could start all over with initial balances, but this makes me want to barf. Maybe I should drink some virtual Pepto-Bismol, and try seeing if I could duplicate my current Quicken setup with Moneydance. Ugh.

There are two versions: Moneydance and Moneydance Plus. The latter has some features most people will find necessary. The publishers of Moneydance have joined the enshittification trend with Moneydance Plus by moving to an annual subscription. Plain Moneydance is still a one-time fee.

Quicken is strange. If you don't renew, you can still use Quicken (with part of the screen telling you that your subscription has expired), but you don't gain access to their new features. (FWIW, one of the new features of the last update is a new craptastic icon! Wooooooie!) So... I upgraded a few years back, then let the subscription expire, then upgraded again after maybe 2 years after finding a coupon online to make it cost only $40.

As said, all this makes me wanna vomit. I think I'll quit blathering now and reach no decision.

If I ever figure anything out (doubtful), I'll write back.

Thanks for the info, though.

Bill