Gofundme Is Asking for Me to Upload Documents to Verify Identity
Why Is Venmo Suddenly Asking Me to Verify My Identity?
Has Venmo recently asked y'all to verify your identity with your social security number, home address, and a government-issued ID? If then, y'all aren't alone. Though the Venmo client identification program first started in 2019, the company appears to have been progressively ramping up its efforts to verify users since the bound.
If yous're security-witting, getting this request might send up a cherry flag with you: Why would Venmo crave me to verify my identity suddenly?
We have part of the answer: Considering Venmo is a money transfer service regulated by the federal government, it is required past the USA PATRIOT Act to implement a Client Identification Program to verify the identities of users making transactions. As to why it's happening now—that'due south not clear. Venmo didn't answer to requests for more than information, only the increase in verification requests is articulate anecdotally. If you're asked to confirm your identity, you must go to the Venmo app in order to input this information, or you will no longer exist able to use your Venmo residue to keep and send money received in the app. (If yous don't verify your identity, yous can still utilize the app—yous merely tin can't hold a balance in it.)
The calls for additional personal information from Venmo have been met with skepticism from users worried that the emails from Venmo may exist a scam or, if real, could expose important personal information to bad actors.
The irony is that Venmo—which has confirmed that emails asking for a social security number are legitimate—is doing thisbecausecash apps are often used to scam users out of money with tactics like phishing or smishing. Request users to further verify their identity could assist put a end to these practices by limiting the use of fraudulent accounts.
Completing the process through the Venmo app tin can help keep you condom. Still, at that place'due south a legitimate run a risk associated with sharing whatsoever personal data online, peculiarly data every bit important as a social security number.
"There are many unlike ways that people could go most identifying themselves. … [G]iving over personal data such equally a social security number is, I believe, bad practice," said Shira Rubinoff, the chief strategy officer for HeraSoft, a company that makes ransomware-proof software. "In the end, you lot're just giving over information that tin can be grabbed by a bad actor."
Even if users aren't the primary targets of an assault, having sensitive information like a social security number stored by a visitor or organization like Venmo can nevertheless be dangerous considering of the risk of data breaches, says Eva Velasquez, the CEO of the ID Theft Eye, a nonprofit defended to providing victims of identity crime free assistance. Still, "identity authentication and verification is actually an important step that has to be taken to stalk all of the identity crimes that are out at that place," Velasquez points out. "So, we encourage people that if it is a legitimate and known vendor that you're choosing to do business with, participate in identity verification processes, because that's an important way to protect yous." Verifying your identity tin brand information technology harder for bad actors to execute these scams, simply because there are more steps needed to do and then.
Under Venmo's rules, users would yet exist able to pay or be paid without verifying their identity, but that money would go to and from a bank account or credit carte du jour rather than money stored in the Venmo account itself. According to experts, using Venmo under that express functionality is not the worst idea.
"When it comes to payment apps, we actually encourage people to only keep the necessary corporeality in there for the transaction at the moment," said Velasquez. "Because if your account is compromised, and you lot actually have dollars in there, and so you're risking the loss of those dollars, rather than having all of the protections from your credit card."
Then if yous get a notice from Venmo: It's legit, and then long as yous make certain information technology's really from Venmo. (The FTC has some expert tips on identifying potential phishing emails.) But you may want to recollect nigh whether it'due south worth verifying your identity anyway.
Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State Academy that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
Source: https://slate.com/technology/2021/06/venmo-identity-verification-scam-or-real.html
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