Ever Accidentally Store You Money Data on Microsoft Servers?

Here's how to delete it.

How to remove your personal financial information from MSN Money

It's actually a pretty nice feature. If you manage your finances with MS Money, you can sych your data for free to MS website. The nice thing is you can access all your information and do all your banking from nearly any computer in the world.

But if you travel with a notebook and keep the data secured there, it's not as useful. And, while I trust MS security on things like that, I still feel the less distribution of my data, the better.

The problem with this feature is that it's easy to accidentally turn in one when you try to set up on line access for new accounts. You actually have to read the dialogue box to realize what is happening. I've turned it on twice accidentally.

And while it's easy to remove the data once you have the directions, it's challenging to find the directions. They don't come up in obvious places in the help menu -- you have to go to the MS Knowledge Base to find the process. Or at least be better at navigating help files than I am.

I don't think MS is hiding this information in some sort of deliberate, conspiratorial fashion. It probably just didn't occur to the development folks that people might not want to use the feature. Or might try it and decide against it.