Mobile payments: When a wallet is no better than a ziploc

"Many startups aren’t properly securing their users’ data," according to Ilga Kharif writing for Bloomberg Business Week. Are you a PayPal, Dwolla, or Venmo user? Then you need to read this article.  If you are using your smart phone to make payments (with any of a variety of apps) you are setting yourself up for identity theft. As more people around the world use mobile payment apps the hackers and thieves are having a hay day taking advantage of the security gaps to steal money and identities from users. 
"Mobile app security provider Bluebox found vulnerabilities in all the roughly 10 unnamed U.S. mobile payment apps it examined last year. 'Most of the time, the apps themselves aren’t using any kind of encryption to protect the data on the phone or to protect the data in transit,' says Andrew Blaich, Bluebox’s lead security analyst."
Think twice before you pay with your smart phone. The few seconds it takes to pay with cash, check, debit or credit card can save months of agonizing frustration if you become a victim of ID theft.  Read the details at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-10/many-mobile-payments-startups-aren-t-properly-securing-user-data