script - Is it legal to screen scrape your own bank statements in the US?

08
2014-07
  • Matt

    I want to automatically download my bank statements. My bank charges monthly for OFX access so have considered gathering the data points by other means (scripting, screen scraping), but I want to know if it's legal in the US. Does anyone have any insight?

    • Answers
  • Nicole Hamilton

    I am not an attorney and I am not giving legal advice. But yes, the information in your monthly account statements is yours. You can copy it however you like.


    • Related Question

    Are there any legal issues while extracting content from RSS feeds?
  • Questioner

    I would like to know whether these free SMS alert sites such as My Today SMS, Alertix pay for the sites such as religate, oneindia.in e.t.c, Or they just mention in their website that this service powered by Oneindia.

    What I would like to know is whether these people pay any royalty/monthly/annual fee for these religate/oneindia, by which I also mean:

    Are there any legal issues attached to extracting data from the RSS feeds these websites provide for services like free SMS alerts?


    • Related Answers
  • William Hilsum

    There is no one answer fits all.

    The main reason for content owners offering RSS feeds is simply because they want to syndicate the content to people in a quick and easy way.

    Generally people offer this service for end users to see the content and there should be no harm in building an application or using a feed for yourself.

    If however, you are going to be references, reselling or offering someone's content to anyone, you start going in the area of copyrighted work... Look at the recent complaints about Google News for example.

    I am pretty sure that if you use any content from any website, you have to agree to their terms and conditions as well as their terms of service which may prevent this sort of activity.

    The only real way to know is to get in contact with the website in question and ask for their permission.

  • Rich Bradshaw

    If you didn't want your content syndicated, you wouldn't publish an RSS feed.

    I'd say that allowing this syndication is one of the reasons for having an RSS feed, and to pursue legal action for someone using it would be stupid.

  • Peter Mortensen

    Their is no Such Legal issue.

    Feel Free to extract them and use them Where ever you want to use or do whatever you want to do with them.

    Giving RSS means the Publisher wishes RSS as frequently updated data.

    Just to get the incoming links / Repearing visitors.

    And there are tons of tools that fetch data.Safari/Firefox/Opera/.. Have built-in features. Yahoo fetches them...