Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/01/25/do-cash-apps-make-it-too-easy-for-thieves-to-empty-accounts.html
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It’s going to take regulation. Otherwise, they’re as unlikely to spend money on adding these features as social media platforms and ad networks are to spend money on human moderation and on filtering out fraudulent ads.
I use Zelle once in a while to re-imburse family and friends for joint gifts or restaurant bills, but only on my computer through the bank Web site.
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Why do you hate capitalism, Gracchus!!! WHY!?! /s
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If it was free & easy to transfer money directly between bank accounts (which I’d already expect to have good security regulations), would these risky apps be needed?
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To make the people who made those apps money. 
They’re “disruptors”, donchaknow…
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Zelle was developed by a consortium of consumer banks with just that intent. The problem being highlighted here by Bragg is that their phone app is as insecure as CashApp’s or Venmo’s.
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I finally relented and recently installed Venmo on my phone (I prefer cash but kept finding myself in situations where friends and family couldn’t deal with cash or checks for sharing bills or whatever) but I was pretty surprised and disappointed at the app’s default security settings. Like when you open the app, the default setting is that you don’t need to enter a PIN, which is ridiculous. And the default privacy settings are terrible. You can view everyone else’s list of friends and all their recent transactions unless they go into their privacy settings and turn that off. Why should that information ever be shared publicly?
Right now I don’t have Venmo linked to my bank or Debit card, and I just have a couple hundred dollars in my Venmo balance for sharing restaurant bills and the like, so hopefully my risk of loss is fairly limited. But I’m kinda annoyed that I found myself needing to use this app at all.
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The opt-in is seriously weird. Whenever I go on venmo, I see that a friend from high school who I haven’t seen in decades is buying flowers for somebody. I guess/hope it’s his wife? Or maybe he became an assassin, and that’s his calling card.
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I don’t use my phone for any banking transactions and never will. I’ve never logged into my bank web page except on my home PC, and that requires a manual login each time. I always carry some cash and use my personal or business credit cards for most transactions so I have a detailed record of my spending.
I check my bank accounts a few times a week and get automatic alerts of deposits, withdrawals and credit card transactions. Call it all a case of professional paranoia.
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Well, we can disrupt them
to the tune of “head being disrupted from body”
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Finally, just the break I’ve been looking for in my pursuit of the assassin known as The Pistil!
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We really need to nip these pun threads in the bud.
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