How to see every app connected to your bank, and revoke the ones you forgot

Why deleting the app is not enough

When you link a bank to an app, the permission is stored on servers, not on your phone. Removing the app from your home screen deletes your copy of the software. The company's servers still hold the token that lets them read your accounts, and nothing tells them to stop.

The same goes for apps you simply stopped opening. A budgeting tool you tried for a week three years ago may still have a working connection today.

Place one: inside the app itself

The cleanest way to end a connection is from the app that made it. Look in settings for something called connected accounts, institutions or linked banks, and disconnect each one. A well-built app tells the connection service to destroy the token at that point, so it stops working everywhere.

If you are leaving the app for good, disconnect your banks first and then delete your account, not just the app. An account deletion should remove your data from the company's servers.

Place two: Plaid's own portal

Plaid runs a free portal for consumers at my.plaid.com. You do not need to have signed up for anything before. After you verify who you are, it shows the apps that are connected to your financial accounts through Plaid, and lets you disconnect any of them, including apps you no longer have installed or can no longer sign in to.

This is the place to look when you do not remember what you connected. It is also where you can ask Plaid to delete the data it holds about you.

One limit: the portal only knows about connections made through Plaid. Apps that use a different connection service will not appear there.

Place three: your bank's security settings

Many large banks now keep their own list of outside apps that have been given access. It is usually in the security or privacy section of the bank's website or app, under a name like connected apps, linked apps or third-party access.

Revoking access here works at the source: the bank stops honoring the connection no matter what the app or the connection service does. If your bank has this page, it is the most reliable switch of the three.

Does changing your bank password cut apps off?

Sometimes, and you should not rely on it. Where the connection was made by signing in on your bank's own site and approving access, the app holds a token that is separate from your password, and changing the password usually leaves it working. Where the connection was made with your username and password, a password change normally breaks it.

So a password change is the right move when you think your sign-in is compromised, but it is not a substitute for revoking access in the places above.

A ten-minute yearly check

• Open Plaid's portal and remove anything you do not use.
• Open your bank's connected apps page, for each bank, and do the same.
• In the apps you do use, check that the list of linked banks matches what you expect.
• For any app you have abandoned, sign in one last time and delete the account.

What disconnecting does in My AI Fin App

Disconnecting a bank under Settings, Institutions removes the connection at Plaid as well as in our database, so nothing keeps syncing in the background. The transactions and debts already imported stay in your account as ordinary data that you can keep, edit or delete. Deleting your account disconnects every linked bank at Plaid as part of the same step.