“Fast fraud” caused by “fast payment” in the United States

A consideration between convenience and safety.

The Translation Bureau is a subordinate translation team, focusing on technology, business, workplace, life and other fields, focusing on introducing new foreign technologies, new perspectives, and new trends.

Editor’s note: In China, Alipay and Payment methods such as WeChat are very safe and convenient, and the domestic online payment process is much faster than abroad. With the spread of the epidemic, people in the United States are increasingly using instant payment applications such as Cash App, Venmo and Zelle. However, payment is convenient and fast, but it also provides convenience for online fraud. Using this service has caused the prevalence of online fraud, and people have to choose between online payment and traditional banking. The original title of this article is “When Your Last $166 Vanishes: ‘Fast Fraud’ Surges on Payment Apps”, I hope to inspire you.

Charee Mobley teaches in a middle school in Fort Worth, Texas. She and her 17-year-old daughter in August In the last two weeks, only $166 can be spent.

But 37-year-old Mobley is using Square’s Cash App (an instant payment application) When the encounter came to a problem, the money disappeared. During the epidemic, Mobley had been using it to pay bills and handle banking business.

Mowbury saw an incorrect online shopping charge on the Cash App, and then she called a call that she mistook for a helpline. But these were all set up by one person, who asked her to download some software, then controlled the application and stole the money in her account.

Mobley said: “I don’t even have gas money, and I can’t pay for my daughter’s high school fees. We basically can only stick to the next week and get the salary.”

During the epidemic, people have used instant payment applications such as Cash App, PayPal’s Venmo, and Zelle because they don’t want to go to bank branches and e-commerce has become more entrenched. To encourage this shift, payment applications have added services such as debit cards and routing numbers, making them more like traditional banks.

But many people don’t realize that when people bypass the bank to use these services, their accounts are vulnerable to losses. Data from security companies Sift and Chargeback Gurus show that the fraud rate of online payment applications has been three to four times that of traditional payment methods such as credit and debit cards for a long time.

In recent months, as more people use these apps, fraud seems to be increasing. According to the New York Times analysis of data from Apptopia, which tracks mobile services, Venmo’s daily users have increased by 26% since last year, and the number of user reviews mentioning fraud or scams has increased nearly fourfold.

What drives this boom is the ease of use of these applications. People only need an email address to create a Cash App account, and a phone number to create a Venmo account. This simplicity allows thieves to seamlessly establish accounts and send withdrawal requests to other users, which is impossible in traditional bank payments.

Compared with standard bank transfers that take two or three days, the instant transactions of these apps also mean that Venmo and Cash App can take less time to detect whether a transaction is fraudulent.

Frank McKenna, chief fraud strategist at the security company PointPredictive, said: “Quick payments are also equivalent to quick fraud.” He said these applications are sometimes called p2p payments Service, “It is very convenient for customers, but it also makes them a target of theft.”

Square, PayPal and Zelle did not disclose the fraud rate of their apps. A PayPal spokesperson said the company willMeasures were taken to “limit potential fraud and reduce the impact on customers,” but she did not specify whether more fraud cases have been discovered.

Security experts say that Zelle, established by the banking alliance, seems to suffer less fraud because it has more reliable authentication for new users and more legal protection in the event of loss.

“Protecting consumers from fraud is Zelle’s top priority,” said Meghan Fintland, a spokeswoman for Early Warning, which runs the app.

Among all payment applications, Square’s Cash App has a particularly serious fraud problem. According to Apptopia data, in the past year, the number of people using the app every day has increased by 59%, while the number of fraud or scams mentioned in the app’s reviews has increased by 165%.

The Better Business Bureau also stated that in the past year, they received more than twice as many complaints about Cash App as Venmo. According to Apptopia data, this is significant given that Venmo has twice the number of users of Cash App.

Square’s spokeswoman Lena Anderson stated that the company “was aware of the recent increase in scammers trying to deceive customers using financial products including Cash App. We have taken a series of Active measures and make it our top priority.”

Square, led by Jack Dorsey, launched the Cash App in 2013. Dorsey is also the CEO of Twitter. Although the San Francisco company was founded as a payment platform for small businesses, Cash App has now become its largest source of income. In the second quarter, Square’s revenue was $1.9 billion, of which $1.2 billion came from Cash App.

But security experts say that Cash App is more vulnerable to fraud, partly because of the way it serves customers. Until recently, Square only provided e-mail support for the application, not telephone service for customers. This makes it easy for some customers to call a fake hotline help number, just like the situation encountered by Mobley. In contrast, Venmo provides a service hotline on its app, and customers can get quick responses.

Anderson said that Square began to provide telephone service to certain customers on October 6. Over time, the company plans to make telephone service available to all customers.

Industry Analyst TableShows that given the way Square builds its business, Cash App seems to be more prone to fraud.

In 2017, Square launched a marketing campaign called Cash App Fridays. In this campaign, users can repost tweets posted by Cash App and attach $Cashtag or username to the tweets. The official will select a group of lucky users and type Money goes to the lucky person’s account. Security experts said the campaign provided fraudsters with a phone book of potential victims.

These activities have also triggered some imitations. The scammers claimed to be the staff of Cash App and stated that if users send a small amount of money first, they will return a large amount of money to the user. A Twitter account named @CashappG has been slogan since its launch in 2019: “Welcome to the Cash App, pay a small amount first, and we will double it back!”

“This provides a mature opportunity for scammers,” said Satnam Narang, a researcher at the security company Tenable, who has written about the fraudulent content of the Cash App.

Emily Bradford, a 21-year-old unemployed in Washington, said that she received a message on Twitter last month that if she pays a “clearance” first, she can Get $3,000 through Cash App. But when she finished sending the money, the person who texted her disappeared, and she lost $75. She said that she contacted the Cash App email, but received no response.

When talking about Square, she said: “I think, since they are dealing with money, especially with other people’s money, then they should have a good security system and customer service.”

Square spokesperson Anderson (Anderson) said that the company recently added warnings about scams to information about Cash App Fridays activities.

In 2018, Square also introduced the function of Bitcoin transactions on the Cash App. This makes it easier to transfer illegal proceeds from the app, because Bitcoin can be sent to an anonymous address, which is harder to track or reverse than traditional financial transactions. Venmo and Zelle do not provide Bitcoin transaction functions.

From the conversations and lists on forums where criminals gather, it is obvious how popular Cash App is in fraud schemes. An analysis by the security company Sixgill shows that in August this year, Cash App was mentioned 10,577 times on dark web forums, an increase of 450% over the same period last year. During the same period, the number of Venmo and Zelle’s appearances on the dark web increased by about 50%.

Ashley Tolley, 31, is the mother of three children from Travelers Rest, South Carolina. She recently experienced scams in Cash App firsthand.

She said that in August of this year, she received a request from a seemingly legitimate address, but one or two emails were changed. Although some transactions were rejected by Square, one transaction was made without her approval. Criminals stole $560 from her account, which was a month’s support from the father of her two youngest children.

Square tells Tory that she can ask the scammer to return the money to her. But this person has deleted his Cash App account.

She said: “I am the only person in the family who can support the family. Now that the money is gone, I am so broken.”

Translator: Jane

domeet webmaster