I've been working on a little program that does this kind of thing for several years now, and it is a PAIN in the ass to maintain. What I really want is a secure RSS feed to watch the transaction histories of my various financial accounts. What I have to do instead is maintain and run little scripts in a hairbag, ultra-obscure, ad hoc language I have designed for groveling through login screens and the like to get the data I need to parse to provide me with the updated information.

I considered writing some kind of proxy based "breakout box", but Bank of America has their own Javascript scrambler code for passwords that just HAS to be reverse engineered, and surely they are not alone in their distrust of SSL.

My program does provide me with updates of various transactions. I love the way it often keeps on working even after major web site redesigns that turn out to largely cosmetic.

My kludge uses Apple's keychain for the passwords. I have already taken the security risk of accessing my accounts from my computer, I may as well get the security benefit of timely updates. Hard to access financial data actually benefits identity thieves. Given the extreme lack of security involved with telephone access to accounts via a live broker, I am willing to take my chances with modern encryption.

But getting back to Firefox extensions and the like. Does anyone have, or is anyone likely to build, a deep bookmarking system that is based on the web site's user interface? EMACS has had something like this for years. Why not just record mouse clicks and keyboard entries? Surely a DOM based scripting language could not be that bad to cobble together.

P.S. Yes, I am incoherent as I often get when I foam about financial institutions. There is just something about banks and brokers that gets to me.