People share addresses that can be misused, either in identity theft or someone could even come and rob you or stalk you,” said Jelena Mirkovic, research associate professor at USC Viterbi and a project leader at the USC Information Sciences Institute. Researchers have found explicit messages between lovers and drug dealers. Journalists have used the app’s search function to uncover a president’s Venmo account, along with his network of associates, including high-ranking officials.
Jelena Mirkovic, research associate professor at USC Viterbi and a project leader at the USC Information Sciences Institute (Photo/Courtesy of Jelena Mirkovic) By making so much information publicly available, Venmo inadvertently puts users at risk. Then, scammers contact these users with requests for money.”Īlthough Venmo allows users to make their transactions private, many don’t have the technological wherewithal or presence of mind to change their settings, experts say. Using the information visible in Venmo’s public feed, they figure out from whom this person had previously sent or received money. 27, 2021 alert: “Scammers are taking advantage of generous friends by changing their username and profile pictures to impersonate real app users.
There was only one problem: They had unwittingly given money to a hacker who had had cloned their friend’s Venmo account, replete with his real picture and name.īecause the popular app makes user profiles, payment notes and friend lists public by default, bad actors have repeatedly harvested this information from unwitting users and created fake profiles of Venmo customers, sometimes just by adding a dash or an underscore to their names.Īs the Better Business Bureau warned in an Aug. Assuming that he had some sort of emergency, they transferred money from their Venmo accounts to his. What Woodard didn’t know, according to WSMV News4 in Nashville, Tennessee, is that several of her husband’s friends received the same request at nearly the same time. The hour of the request, coupled with her husband’s strange message, raised suspicions in her mind. He included an electronic note simply saying that he would explain later. In May 2021, Keighley Woodard’s out-of-town spouse asked her to send $195 on the Venmo payment app. You can now choose not to appear in other people's friends lists, though, by making sure the appropriate option is toggled off in the same settings section.The bizarre request came from her husband at 2 a.m. However, it's still set to public by default, which means any Venmo user can see your list unless you go into your settings and change it. The new Friends List section lets you set your lists to be visible to friends only or to be visible only to yourself.
VENMO FRIENDS LIST SOFTWARE
Jane Manchun Wong, a software engineer and app researcher known for unearthing yet-to-be-released features in applications, discovered the new setting on Friday. Now, the PayPal-owned mobile payment service has started rolling out a change in users' privacy settings that would allow you to hide your friends list. In fact, it's so easy, BuzzFeed News was able to find the accounts of President Joe Biden, the first lady and other members of their family a couple of weeks ago. It's pretty easy to find people on Venmo if you have the patience to go through someone's friends' list, which is visible to anyone on the app.
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