The Latest Venmo News: Security, User Behavior, and More

Venmo has become a staple for peer-to-peer payments, with over 40 million users in the United States alone.

The platform has seen a significant increase in usage, with users making over 1.5 billion transactions in 2020.

Venmo's popularity can be attributed to its social features, which allow users to share their payment activity with friends and followers.

Venmo's user base is predominantly made up of young adults, with 63% of users falling between the ages of 18 and 34.

Scammers are using Venmo to trick people out of their money, often by impersonating tech support or sending fake notifications to reset passwords. This is a typical form of fraud that the FBI says has been growing exponentially.

Reported cases of online fraud have nearly doubled since 2019, and the money lost has almost quadrupled to $12.5 billion last year alone. This is a staggering amount, and it's essential to take steps to protect yourself.

The Federal Trade Commission recommends setting up two-step authentication on your Venmo account. This means nobody will be able to reset your login without a unique code that's sent directly to you.

Never share your Venmo code with anyone, even if they call you and ask for it. Scammers often try to beat you to it by calling from untraceable numbers and asking for the security reset code.

Here are some common types of P2P scams to watch out for:

Remember, it's always best to use an extra degree of caution with any transaction involving someone you don't know.

Venmo has a strong social orientation, with users often sharing transaction details in social media-like feeds.

Users can make their list of friends private, but most accounts have a public "friends list" that shares transaction details.

Venmo allows users to include payment notes with their transactions, making it easy to communicate with friends about payments.

Venmo's strong social orientation is a key feature that sets it apart from other payment apps. This aspect of the platform has been a part of its design since its inception.

In 2009, the founders thought of Venmo as a platform that would allow friends to send money to each other, with a social feed in mind. The company's website describes it as "a social way to pay your friends when you owe them money and don't want to deal with cash."

Most Venmo accounts have a "friends list" that shares transaction details in social media-like feeds, including payment notes. This feature has been a part of the platform since its early days.

Last year, Venmo made it possible for users to make their list of friends private, giving users more control over their social interactions on the platform. This change shows that the company is listening to user feedback and adapting to their needs.

Venmo makes user profiles, payment notes, and friend lists public by default, allowing anyone to see your information.

Journalists have used the app's search function to uncover President Joe Biden's Venmo account and his network of associates, including other high-ranking officials.

Researchers have found explicit messages between lovers and drug dealers, and bad actors have harvested information from unwitting users to create fake profiles and request money.

The Better Business Bureau warned users of the scam in August 2021, stating that scammers use the information visible in Venmo's public feed to figure out from whom a person had previously sent or received money.

People on Venmo share addresses that can be misused for identity theft, and someone could even come and rob you or stalk you.

Jelena Mirkovic, research associate professor at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, says that if you share something sensitive on Venmo, it can have implications later on, such as affecting your job prospects.

In a study, Mirkovic and her team found that millions of users reveal highly personal information about themselves on Venmo, including drug and alcohol use, political leanings, email addresses, phone numbers, and even Wi-Fi, bank account, and Netflix passwords.

The default settings on Venmo make all this information public.

A 2018 Mozilla-Ipsos poll found that 77% of Americans opposed public-by-default settings on financial apps.

Venmo has resisted changing its default settings, despite the concerns raised by users and experts.