Okay but how safe is Venmo?
My Venmo Story
I was at lunch with older classmates my freshman year of college, when the server set the bill down. One of my classmates said “I’ll pay, you can all just Venmo me.” That was the first time that I had ever heard of the app Venmo. In that instant I pulled out my phone, downloaded the app, and quickly created my account. As a majority of Venmo’s users are college students, many of them don’t realize that their information is not very well protected. Slate magazine published an article called “Venmo Money, Venmo Problems,” which described the trendiness of the quickly growing app “Venmo”, and its lack of security. When I downloaded the app my freshman year, I did not question its safeness, because the other five people at my table were encouraging it. Even before researching this topic, I did not think about how easy it could be for someone to hack my account. This article has taught me much in regards to what fraudulent actions could possibly occur while using this app. The frightening examples it gives have caused me to consider deleting my Venmo account all together.
As the article from Slate begins, the writer states that there have been multiple instances in which someone’s Venmo account has been hacked, password and email changed, and almost $3,000 transferred to a stranger. It would be terrifying to wake up and realize that thousands of dollars have been transferred out of your bank account unknowingly. In these cases, the users have gone to the “contact us” option that Venmo gives, but are taken back because there is no actual phone number to call. Venmo had about 70 full-time employees in November of 2016, but the only customer service that Venmo offers is an email service that is extremely slow at responding. Venmo did not notify the user when his account settings were changed. The only way that this user found out his account had been hacked was when he got a message saying that a large sum of money had been taken out of his Venmo account. In another article from Slate called “Venmo Scammers Know Something You Don’t,” there was a story about a man selling pricey NBA tickets through Venmo. Long story short, after he had given the stranger the tickets, the Venmo transaction was reversed. He immediately sent an email to Venmo’s customer service but received no response back. On Venmo’s security section, under “Keep yourself Safe” it states “Avoid payments to people you don’t know, especially if it involves a sale for goods and services (like event tickets and Craigslist items).” Whenever instances like this happen, Venmo rarely gets you your money back, as “Venmo does not offer buyer or seller protection.” Venmo’s lack of security has a lot to do with the quickness and easiness of the app.
Users of Venmo are often so entranced by the easiness of the app that they overlook the fact that Venmo’s security system is not set up well. The first article that I referenced explains that there are about four steps that a user will take when creating a Venmo account. This brings in more people to download the app if they know that it won’t take long to set everything up. Sending or gaining money is also a fast process, so the entire idea of being able to pay people via an app is enticing. What is bad about this easiness is that it proves the app’s questionable security; a user’s information may be more susceptible to fraudulent activity. Instances that deal with fraud may be when selling an item to a stranger online. Venmo will tell the user “they paid you”, when really, the money does not transfer over for a few days. This gives the scammer the opportunity to cancel their payment, scamming you out of the item you sold to them. An easy fix for this would be for the company to make the notification say “they have began the process of paying you.” Many aspects of Venmo like this are dangerous, the most being linking your bank account.
As you are signing up for Venmo, you have the option to link your bank, credit card, or debit card. Some say those options are specifically set up in that order to persuade the user into the more riskier option, which would be linking the bank account. There is a 3% fee when using a credit card, so this would also encourage the user into using the other options, potentially increasing the chance of fraudulent activities. Students from an institute in Massachusetts claimed that the social part of Venmo makes users more susceptible to hacking. Speaking from personal experience, I have almost sent money to the wrong person because there was an account similar to the one I was searching for. Since Venmo’s settings can easily be changed, it benefits anyone trying to impersonate another. Recently the new app called Zelle, which is a payment app ran by the U.S. banking industry, has been competing with Venmo. It is said that rather than taking two business days to transfer money into your account, Zelle will do it in a matter of minutes! It has also been stated that you will only have to enter information like a phone number or email to use the app. Zelle seems to be a more secure way of transferring money via phone, and has had no issues with fraud.
When imagine the instances I have referenced from the Slate articles happening to myself, I would not know how to handle the situation. There is not much a user can do after finding out that there is no customer service number to call and no quick response to an email. The Venmo company obviously has no care for its users if there is no direct way to contact about a problem. I enjoy knowing that a company cares for me, so in this aspect, I think that people should stop endorsing Venmo as much as they do. As a Venmo user, these articles tremendously altered my outlook on the app and made me aware of the possibilities of hacking; It has changed my perspective on the entire company and what it stands for.