From today’s Wired Magazine:
VENMO, THE POPULAR payment app owned by PayPal, has become the default way millions of Americans settle a check, pay a friend back for coffee, or buy a concert ticket off Craigslist. Writers have argued that Venmoing makes us petty, and that the app has nearly killed cash. Fewer have questioned whether it’s really the best service for exchanging money, or storing sensitive banking information.
The app has reigned supreme for over half a decade, but in 2018, there are more secure and easier-to-use payment options worth considering as replacements. Venmoing may be standard, but here’s why I’ve switched.
Most Venmo competitors, like Square’s Cash app, share the same core feature: You can send money with a few taps and swipes. Venmo is unique in that it has a social networking component. By default, all peer-to-peer Venmo transactions—aside from the payment amount—are public, to everyone in the world.
Creepy, right? Venmo does give users the ability to limit who can see transactions both before and after they’re sent, but many people don’t choose to adjust their privacy settings. When I opened Venmo recently, the first payment on my news feed was from a friend whose concerns about privacy have led him to delete both his Instagram and Facebook accounts. Despite taking drastic steps to limit his digital footprint, I know who he ate sushi with last night, thanks to Venmo.
Venmo’s insistence on mimicking a social networking app isn’t just weird—it can have unnerving consequences. In July, privacy advocate and designer Hang Do Thi Duc released Public by Default, a site that taps into Venmo’s API to highlight how much information can be gathered about you from your public activity on the app. She was able to trace the exact spending habits of a couple in California, documenting what stores they shopped at, when they took their dog to the vet, and when they made loan payments.
Read the complete article here.