Computer Science Student Shows Venmo Transactions Can Be Easily Acquired

Computer Science Student Shows Venmo Transactions Can Be Easily Acquired

A year after a privacy researcher showed the world that Venmo transactions could be easily accessed, a computer science student scraped seven million Venmo transactions to increase awareness of the issue.

  • By Kaitlyn DeHaven
  • Jun 19, 2019

A computer science student, Dan Salmon, has been scraping Venmo transactions for the past six months to prove that Venmo’s public activity is not hard to obtain, even after last year, when a privacy researcher showed that Venmo need to curb its privacy issue. The result is that seven million Venmo transactions were obtained by Salmon in this six-month period.

Salmon told TechCrunch he did this in order to raise awareness and encourage users to set their transactions to private. He said that despite Venmo changing their privacy policy, it is still easy to gain access to millions of transactions through Venmo’s developer API. User permission is not necessary to access this information.

“There’s truly no reason to have this API open to unauthenticated requests,” he told TechCrunch. “The API only exists to provide like a scrolling feed of public transactions for the home page of the app, but if that’s your goal, then you should require a token with each request to verify that the user is logged in.”

Sam Bakken, the senior product marketing manager at OneSpan, said that Venmo purposefully designed the homepage news feed feature in order to increase engagement, and some users enjoy looking through the feed to see what their friends are doing. This means that some users leave their transactions available to the public on purpose. He said that he hopes this information will encourage some users to go private with their information.

“Users do have the ability to decide whether their transactions are shared publicly or with friends or not at all,” Bakken said. “I’d argue Venmo should default to keeping users’ transactions private, and if this incident doesn’t convince Venmo to change their policy – I hope at least more people will become aware of this and consider changing their settings.”

Ameya Talwalkar, co-founder and CPO of Cequence Security, said that scraping attacks are becoming increasingly harder to prevent due to the hyper-connectivity culture of this age.

“Many of today’s hyper-connected organizations are faced with the challenge of how to address content scraping attacks in an efficient and scalable manner,” Talwalkar said. “The impact of this attack can be wide-ranging, starting from overspending on infrastructure to devastating loss of intellectual property. Of all the automated business logic abuse attacks, content scraping is the most difficult to prevent.”

About the Author

Kaitlyn DeHaven is the Associate Content Editor for the Infrastructure Solutions Group at 1105 Media.

Featured

  • Report: 47 Percent of Security Service Providers Are Not Yet Using AI or Automation Tools

    Trackforce, a provider of security workforce management platforms, today announced the launch of its 2025 Physical Security Operations Benchmark Report, an industry-first study that benchmarks both private security service providers and corporate security teams side by side. Based on a survey of over 300 security professionals across the globe, the report provides a comprehensive look at the state of physical security operations. Read Now

    • Guard Services

  • Identity Governance at the Crossroads of Complexity and Scale

    Modern enterprises are grappling with an increasing number of identities, both human and machine, across an ever-growing number of systems. They must also deal with increased operational demands, including faster onboarding, more scalable models, and tighter security enforcement. Navigating these ever-growing challenges with speed and accuracy requires a new approach to identity governance that is built for the future enterprise. Read Now

  • Eagle Eye Networks Launches AI Camera Gun Detection

    Eagle Eye Networks, a provider of cloud video surveillance, recently introduced Eagle Eye Gun Detection, a new layer of protection for schools and businesses that works with existing security cameras and infrastructure. Eagle Eye Networks is the first to build gun detection into its platform. Read Now

  • Report: AI is Supercharging Old-School Cybercriminal Tactics

    AI isn’t just transforming how we work. It’s reshaping how cybercriminals attack, with threat actors exploiting AI to mass produce malicious code loaders, steal browser credentials and accelerate cloud attacks, according to a new report from Elastic. Read Now

  • Pragmatism, Productivity, and the Push for Accountability in 2025-2026

    Every year, the security industry debates whether artificial intelligence is a disruption, an enabler, or a distraction. By 2025, that conversation matured, where AI became a working dimension in physical identity and access management (PIAM) programs. Observations from 2025 highlight this turning point in AI’s role in access control and define how security leaders are being distinguished based on how they apply it. Read Now

Most   Popular

New Products

  • ResponderLink

    ResponderLink

    Shooter Detection Systems (SDS), an Alarm.com company and a global leader in gunshot detection solutions, has introduced ResponderLink, a groundbreaking new 911 notification service for gunshot events. ResponderLink completes the circle from detection to 911 notification to first responder awareness, giving law enforcement enhanced situational intelligence they urgently need to save lives. Integrating SDS’s proven gunshot detection system with Noonlight’s SendPolice platform, ResponderLink is the first solution to automatically deliver real-time gunshot detection data to 911 call centers and first responders. When shots are detected, the 911 dispatching center, also known as the Public Safety Answering Point or PSAP, is contacted based on the gunfire location, enabling faster initiation of life-saving emergency protocols.

  • Unified VMS

    AxxonSoft introduces version 2.0 of the Axxon One VMS. The new release features integrations with various physical security systems, making Axxon One a unified VMS. Other enhancements include new AI video analytics and intelligent search functions, hardened cybersecurity, usability and performance improvements, and expanded cloud capabilities

  • QCS7230 System-on-Chip (SoC)

    QCS7230 System-on-Chip (SoC)

    The latest Qualcomm® Vision Intelligence Platform offers next-generation smart camera IoT solutions to improve safety and security across enterprises, cities and spaces. The Vision Intelligence Platform was expanded in March 2022 with the introduction of the QCS7230 System-on-Chip (SoC), which delivers superior artificial intelligence (AI) inferencing at the edge.