Legal Implications
Financial institutions are concerned about the possibility of liability arising from data aggregation activities, potential security problems, infringement on intellectual property rights and the possibility of diminishing traffic to the institution's website. The aggregator and financial institution may agree on a data feed arrangement activated on the customer's request, using an Open Financial Exchange (OFX) standard to request and deliver information to the site selected by the customer as the place from which they will view their account data. Agreements provide an opportunity for institutions to negotiate to protect their customers' interests and offer aggregators the opportunity to provide a robust service. Aggregators who agree with information providers to extract data without using an OFX standard may reach a lower level of consensual relationship; therefore, "screen scraping" may be used to obtain account data, but for business or other reasons, the aggregator may decide to obtain prior consent and negotiate the terms on which customer data is made available. "Screen scraping" without consent by the content provider has the advantage of allowing subscribers to view almost any and all accounts they happen to have opened anywhere on the Internet through one website.
Read more about this topic: Data Aggregator
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