Delta Blocks Award Wallet Users from Tracking Miles

That’s terrible! I use AW and find it very helpful to have the information in one place for quick reference. Very disappointing, Delta.

I’m hoping one of the computer geniuses will figure out a “work around” like has been done for other times when access to information has been limited or restricted.

The security angle is important,but considering that the banking industry has allowed plenty of third party products to download customer data (such as mint.com, turbotax, etc), Delta could have created a partnership or a more secure interface for third party products if they wanted to. The model of saving your password to a trusted third party is not unusual at all. Now if the method that AwardWallet was using to pull data was insecure and was never addressed, then I can see Delta refusing a connection from them. But I wouldn’t be surprised if their motivation is to keep you on Delta.com or Fly Delta mobile.

The financial and health industries are the industries that have legislation around privacy and security. Your typical loyalty account, actually most any industry other than financial/health/gov, does not have much if any legislation in this area. As well, North America does not have any blanket legislation (as does the EU) protecting your privacy. From that perspective you cannot compare financial industry practices with loyalty programs.

I’m sure that there are other motivations as well, possibly even as primary driver for organizations that may not care so much about privacy. If I were in the airline industry, I’d look at it as getting to close down a potentially unknown liability while potentially making a bit more on the marketing front. win-win for me.

But really, I’m just saying security is not just a pretext. Any time you reuse a password and/or share that password, you open yourself to privacy and security issues.

Yes, Delta and other airlines should be working to provide APIs that third parties can use, I’m not sure what their incentive to do that would be.

Unblocked now.

yeah, you’re likely right, IANAL. That doesn’t negate the issue. in their position I’d be very concerned if a 3rd party had access to that many of my users passwords. I personally would take a different route though, and provide a way for 3rd parties to provide these services without taking passwords or having access to unnecessary data.

This is not a new problem. Bank aggregators (Quicken, mint.com, amex money manager), and others have been doing this for a while now. Despite all this there’s only one bank that uses an API based system that I’ve found and openly encourages it — ING direct. Furthermore, recently the bank aggregators have started tracking miles/points too.

I agree it’s not the most secure way, but it’s something we choose to accept.

Granted, it certainly would not be difficult to provide a read only user/pass, but lack of standardization will make this difficult.

I think it may be a business decision as much as a security one. Other solutions (tripit, mint.com, points.com, and other remain).

The security angle is merely a guise. If delta really cared about security of the username and passwords their login page would be using SSL (the little lock in your browser). Without getting into the details, this is a horrible practice. It can allow an attacker to capture your skymiles username/pin/lastname if you login to your account using an airport wifi.

It’s really about page views and opportunity for upsells. Let’s be realistic folks.

How about this for motivation? As a protest, I’ve tweeted @delta and @deltaassist about the situation. I’m taking my ~$3000/yr x2 (myself and girlfriend) in revenue to another airline. Any other airline. I’ll also be burning through my miles ASAP.

I don’t care about this method getting shut down, but not having an API a la ING Direct and a few other places means not being able to effectively utilize my time.

You can make the business case all you want, but that won’t replace the $6000/yr I took from them.

TripitPro also discontinued monitoring of Skymiles.

Makes me want to cancel my subscription.

There is a petition on change.org, not sure if it will help but you never know

http://www.change.org/petitions/delta-airlines-allow-awardwallet-to-access-consenting-delta-customers-data#share

UsingMiles – is allowed to track United – and they are currently giving away a free membership
http://www.usingmiles.com/account/signup?pc=friends