rpxl

I do not think self-employment damages your employability so long as you have something to talk about at interviews. Self-employment is still employment. Any employer that is going to be successful in talent acquisition among the younger generations will know this.

The tech industry illustrates this regularly with company cultures that embrace diverse career backgrounds.

Of course i think your field will probably determine how much my statement applies. For my field in software, independent contracting is a common feature in ones work history especially for the younger generations. I would look at your peers in your industry and domain for clues.

Asking for your banking credentials does not worry me. I would need to look more closely at this particular one, or even contact their customer support to see if they have in-house security (the cyber kind) and what certifications they have, dates and nature of audits etc. I worked for a company like this as a software engineer and know the lengths they go to ensure there is minimal data on their servers that could be stolen. And yes, this could mean your data is sent to a third party. Sometimes it's more cost efficient and secure to use a third party scraper which hands back a token for access and pays for all the security stuffs to keep your data safe.

What DOES concern me as that the whole purpose of this service is to correlate data about you that is otherwise behind locked doors and explicitly keeping identity information intact. The services profit from your data and it's sale would far far out way any individuals.