How To Protect Yourself From The Venmo, Zelle And Cash App Scam

Kurt Knutsson, CyberGuy Report  Sat, January 27, 2024

Imagine walking down the sidewalk and being confronted at gunpoint by a crook.

Open the payment app on your phone and transfer out your hard-earned cash, or take a bullet in the head. That’s one phone cash ripoff scenario of many playing out in real-life America.

Other cash app crimes are happening due to the vulnerability of an unlocked iPhone without the new Stolen Device Protection turned on in iOS. These are examples of how mobile payment apps can put your money and your life at risk.

Do you use mobile payment apps like Venmo, Zelle or Cash App to send and receive money? If so, you're not alone. These peer-to-peer payment services now handle an estimated $1 trillion in payments. And with that much money involved, there are also now a lot of fraud and scams going on, according to Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney. He says these apps are exposing many people to scammers and thieves and are costing them a lot of their hard-earned cash.                                 

In response, Bragg has written letters to the companies that own these apps, demanding they improve their security and protect their users from scams and thefts. His specific request is that they impose limits on transactions, require secondary verification of up to a day and better monitor unusual activity. He says he is requesting meetings with the companies to discuss these issues.

Bragg’s letters describe how these financial apps enable criminals to access unlocked devices and exploit them for financial gain and identity theft, saying,

"These crimes involve an unauthorized user gaining access to unlocked devices and then draining bank accounts of significant sums of money, making purchases with mobile financial applications, and using financial information from the applications to open new accounts.

"Offenders also take over the phone's security by changing passwords, recovery accounts, and application settings. The ease with which offenders can collect five- and even six-figure windfalls in a matter of minutes is incentivizing a large number of individuals to commit these crimes, which are creating serious financial, and in some cases physical, harm to our residents."

MANHATTAN DA ALVIN BRAGG CALLS FOR CASH APPS TO CRACK DOWN ON FRAUDSTERS

The companies that own these apps have responded to Bragg’s comments and said that they are doing their best to provide a safe and reliable service to their customers. We reached out to all three companies. Here are their responses to us.

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://news.yahoo.com/protect-yourself-venmo-zelle-cash-110036793.html