Cash app security

Almost every day, we hear on the news about security breaches, ransomware, and more. Your cash app is not secure unless you take extra steps to ensure cash app security.

Payment Apps Collect and Share Your Content

Listen to what Mashable has to say about payment apps. According to the author, Payment Apps Collect and Share Your Data. Mobile payment apps including Venmo, Cash App, and PayPal Mobile Cash have become almost indispensable. While they offer users real value and convenience, they pose a severe and often hidden privacy toll. However, there are steps you can take to lock down your apps.

Do you have a cash app? Do you believe that your privacy is secure? Do you take time to read the application’s terms of service, privacy policy, or disclaimers and notices posted? And if you do, are you prone to gloss over the information?

Avoidance is not a wise practice. Those disclaimers and notices are essential as they typically warn customers that once they download and use the app, their information is no longer the customer’s data. Especially with financial data, you may need to reveal religious beliefs, sexual orientation, medical history, political persuasion, friends, and location. Yikes! — you may lose your privacy. And if you have a mobile payment app, you are limited on what you can do to protect your information.

What Do They Collect and Share

Regardless of whether you use Venmo, Cash App, or PayPal, there are things you can do to lock down what they collect and share. First, let’s start with Venmo.

Venmo – Venmo was created in 2009 and acquired by PalPal in 2014 from Braintree for an estimated $800 million buyout. Venmo is one of PayPal’s most popular products.

What They Share

People use Venmo for a variety of reasons. Surprisingly, buying drugs or donating to aid groups are just two ways to use the app. With Venmo’s public-by-default model, those transactions are both a part of the public record and used by Venmo for its ends. What? For its own ends?? That’s my data. Well, that depends.

Effective June 1, 2021, Venmo updated its Privacy Policy. Their official policy states, “This privacy policy applies to all information we collect through our Services from current and former Venmo users, including you. “Services” means any products, services, content, features, technologies, or functions, and all related websites, applications and services offered to you by PayPal, Inc. in connection with a Venmo account. When you are no longer our customer, we continue to share your information as described in this policy. This policy only applies to the Services and does not apply to the practices of any other PayPal service.”

When you open a Venmo account, the Company collects the following information from you:

• Account information
• Identification information (name, address, email address, date of birth, and social security number.
• Device Information
• Geolocation information
• Social web information, and
• Financial information (bank account online login info, bank account and routing numbers, and credit cards linked to your Venmo account.)

If you think the above is all they collect, you would be wrong. If you have a Venmo account, please be sure to read their Terms and Privacy policies.

Lock Down

Mashable explains how to lock down your transaction history:

1. Open your iOS Venmo app and tap the three horizontal lines in the upper-right corner of the app.
2. Scroll down and select “Settings”
3. Tap “Privacy”
4. Under “Default Privacy Settings” select “Private”
5. While you’re there, tap “Past Transactions” and select “Change all to Private”

In addition, Mashable presents a step-by-step for hiding your friends list:

1. Update your version of the app.
2. Open Venmo and click on the three horizontal lines in the upper-right corner.
3. Scroll down and choose “Settings.”
4. Tap “Privacy”
5. Select “Friends List”
6. Select “Private”
7. Also toggle off the option “Appear in other users’ friends lists”

All aspects for locking down Venmo’s cash app’s security are covered here, but with research on your part, you will have a good hold on ways to check and fix issues.

Cash App – Next on our list for payment app security is Cash App. According to Wikipedia, the app was called Square Cash and was developed as a mobile payment service developed by Square Inc.

What They Share

Cash App’s new terms of service became effective as of June 24, 2021. According to Cash App’s privacy policy, the app collects a variety of data. Two examples of data are users’ real names and a person’s email address

Square collects information such as your name, email address, text-enabled mobile phone number, street address, zip code, date of birth, social security number, and a government-issued form of identification. And, of course, you will need to confirm that the information you provided is truthful and accurate.

One of the most frightening terms is, “We take security incredibly seriously, but can’t guarantee that bad actors will not gain access to your personal information.” To me, that does not give me a warm, fuzzy feeling. How about you?

Cash App does not sell your information to third parties, so that is good. But it does spell out that it may share within Square’s group of companies or affiliates. In addition, Square may share data with service providers or other third parties) gathered and anonymized information that does not explicitly identify you or any individual user of services.

Lock Down

From research Mashable reports on, there does not appear to be much a user can do to lock your data down unless you decide not to download it. Fortunately, if you live in California, you do have more options.

The last on our list of payment apps is PayPal.

PayPal – PayPal was not always PayPal. It began as Confinity in 1998. Again, according to Wikipedia, PayPal went public through an initial public offering in 2002. It became a wholly-owned subsidiary of eBay later that year, valued at $1.5 billion. In 2015, eBay spun off PayPal to eBay’s shareholders, and PayPal became an independent company again.

What They Share

PayPal’s User Agreement is a contract between you as a user and PayPal, Inc. The agreement governs the use of your PayPal account and its services. The link I am providing to you applies only to U.S. PayPal accounts.

As with the other two payment apps I have mentioned, we recommend reading the terms and the privacy updates carefully.

PayPal may collect both users’ GPS location data and location observed through your IP address. The data is necessary to PayPal. It tells them a great deal about your spending habits.

In addition, PayPal’s privacy policy is clear when it explains it can use your data for its own marketing purposes. The collection of data includes any existing companies that PayPal owns, such as Xoom and Venmo.

Furthermore, you authorize PayPal, directly or through third parties, to make any inquiries the Company considers necessary to verify your identity. Included are the following:

• asking you for further information, such as your date of birth, a taxpayer identification number, your physical address, and other information that will allow us to reasonably identify you;
• requiring you to take steps to confirm ownership of your email address or financial instruments;
• ordering a credit report from a credit-reporting agency, or verifying your information against third-party databases or through other sources; or
• requiring you to provide your driver’s license or other identifying documents.

iOS Capability Anyone

Do you wonder if there is a money app and mobile wallet for iOS? Well, yes, there is. PayPal has a Mobile Cash app just for iPhone and iPod touch with an iOS of 11.0 or later.

Do you need to be concerned with cash app security with Mobile Cash? Yes. That is to say that the App Store Preview provides you with the below app privacy that may be collected and linked to your identity.

The developer, PayPal, Inc., indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.

Yes, PayPal Mobile Cash does allow you to make choices. You do have rights detailed in the developer’s privacy policy shown above.

Closing Cash App Security Remarks

You (yes, you) are responsible for your cash app security – whether it be Venmo, Cash App, or PayPal. Be smart, read the privacy policy, terms of service, and know what is collected and how to lock down your privacy. Contact us if you have any questions.

#paymentapps #cashapps

Categorised in: Apps

This post was written by Megabite