The Art of Using Cash for Person-to-Person Transfers with Strangers

As we've explored in recent episodes, using cash for person-to-person transfers can be an effective way to protect yourself from scams and risks. But what exactly is safe to use when it comes to transferring cash with strangers? In this article, we'll dive into the world of cash transactions and discuss some options that might be worth considering.

Using Venmo: A Convenient but Flawed Option

When it comes to using a service for person-to-person transfers, Venmo has become a popular choice in recent years. With its easy signup process and frictionless transactions, it's no wonder why many people have turned to Venmo as their go-to option. However, we must be careful when using services like Venmo, especially with strangers.

We recently asked our managing editor, Neil Hughes, about his experience with Venmo and other person-to-person transfer services. "I've used Venmo with friends, but I've never used it with a random person," he said. "And I've never been scammed on it." However, he also noted that the way Venmo operates can make it vulnerable to scams. "You shouldn't use it with people you don't know," he advised. "Stick with cash if it's somebody you don't know and you're selling something on Craigslist or just taking a little bit of a loss and selling it through a service that does back up what they say."

Square Cash: A Safer Alternative?

Some have suggested that Square Cash is a safer alternative to Venmo, but we must exercise caution when evaluating any new option. "I've heard that Square Cash is more secure because of the way it works," said our host, Victor Marks, "but I haven't personally looked into it and I don't know if you can scam with it." While it's possible that Square Cash may be a better option in some respects, we must remain skeptical until we have a deeper understanding of its inner workings.

The Importance of Being Cautious

Regardless of which service you choose to use for person-to-person transfers, it's essential to be cautious and take necessary precautions. "If someone owes you money, just go over to their house and knock on the door," advised Neil Hughes. This approach may seem old-fashioned, but it can be an effective way to resolve disputes in a low-stakes environment.

The Power of Cash: A Simple yet Effective Solution

In an era where digital transactions are increasingly common, cash is often seen as an outdated solution. However, when it comes to person-to-person transfers with strangers, cash remains one of the safest options available. By sticking with cash, you can avoid many of the risks associated with digital transactions and ensure that your money is protected.

Tips for Using Cash Safely

So how can you use cash safely and effectively? Here are a few tips:

* Only use cash when transferring money to someone you know well.

* Avoid using cash for large transactions or with strangers.

* Consider using a service like Square Cash, which handles person-to-person transfers in a secure and efficient manner.

Conclusion

Using cash for person-to-person transfers can be an effective way to protect yourself from scams and risks. While services like Venmo and Square Cash may offer convenience and ease of use, they also come with inherent security risks. By being cautious and taking necessary precautions, you can minimize your exposure to these risks and ensure that your money is protected. Remember: cash is often the safest option when it comes to person-to-person transfers with strangers.

**Recommended Services**

While we don't endorse any particular service for person-to-person transfers, we do recommend exploring options like Square Cash or PayPal, which offer secure and reliable transactions. However, always exercise caution and take necessary precautions before using any new service.

**Additional Resources**

For more information on how to protect yourself from scams and risks when using digital services, check out our recent episode on cybersecurity tips.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to episode 44 of our show where we discuss the latest news about Apple iPhone iPad mac Apple watch Apple TV and more we're recording on Wednesday November 25th 2015 I want to ask all of our USA listeners to go to appleinsider.com on Friday for an exclusive offer the deal is this you get a free 32 GB Apple TV with the purchase of any 2015 MacBook Pro Plus up to $230 in additional discounts per model with no tax in 48 states this is one uping our offer from last year this Black Friday Apple Insider has teamed with one of Apple's top authorized resellers to knock $30 to $111 off of all 2015 13-inch MacBook Pros and 71 to $230 off of all 2015 15-in MacBook Pros and then throw in a brand new fourth generation 32 GB Apple TV on top of those discounts for free plus free shipping and no tax in 48 states be sure to go to appleinsider.com on Friday for this and more discounts so Neil one of the other sponsors of today's shows is uh Mac Welden and Mac Welden makes all kinds of of apparel Goods t-shirts socks undergarments things like that and they uh they wanted to sponsor the show and they wanted us to talk sort of extemporaneously about their kind of product and uh and how it's related to to you know our sort of lives and I wanted to start out by just throwing this out there did did you ever have anyone ever give you socks for Christmas yes and what was your reaction when you got socks for Christmas uh usually they were bought as a joke gift oh okay so it was totally a joke you knew it was a joke kind of thing yeah okay I remember being like seven years old and getting socks as a gift from an aunt and being really kind of put out that that this this was the gift that you give me and that was like the only gift from this aunt and you know Co cool person but I only learned that as an adult that she was a cool person for for the longest time as a kid I I just like like what the heck was that you know so do we agree that socks are kind of a a boring and jokey kind of gift right yes I would agree with that Mikey you think the same way um I suppose Mikey is there a irance under which you want to get socks for a gift I don't know man socks socks are pretty cool well that's that's exactly what Ma Weldon wants us to think is is that they think they've taken socks from being this boring jokey kind of gift into being something that's a top-of-the-line gift that you should feel good about and what they're doing is they're using smart design they're using premium fabrics and they're trying to make it interesting they're trying to make it something that you're glad to get and all of their Fabrics are naturally antimicrobial which means they don't stink so no more stinky socks and one of the things that I like about the shopping experience with them because I've been trying out and looking through their web store is that if you don't like the first pair you can keep it and they will still refund you without asking questions so it's it's really uh a lowrisk proposition you just go ahead and place your order and if you don't like it you keep the first pair and all of our listeners can go to mackweldon.com and get 20% off using the promo code Insider so who know know maybe socks would be a cool gift this year now I want to jump into the topics we had our Impressions post this week about the apple pencil so we had our first look with it uh Neil is that yours yeah I got my hands on it last week and uh got to Doodle around with it a little bit so you you we got the first look article and we also had an article about what you can and cannot do with an apple pencil on the iPad Pro so so tell us about that what what can you do and what can you not do with the apple pencil well when the pencil was uh not quite in the hands of everybody yet there were some people in our comments that uh had heard rumors that you couldn't do certain things or whatever like you couldn't launch apps with it or use it on the home screen or things like that that's not true you can do all that kind of stuff you can type on a keyboard with it you could use a swipe keyboard for one-handed typing if you wanted um all that stuff works there are certain things that don't work like uh obviously any five finger gestures like for multitasking you can't do uh none of the edge gestures work so you can't do slide over um you can't resize windows in split view you can't bring up control center or bring down the notification center um you have to use your finger for those but other than that uh it works basically as you'd expect uh even Palm Rec uh Palm rejection I should say works with apps that aren't designed for the pencil so so what are the best uses of the pencil I mean obviously for drawing but I I suppose if you really wanted a stylus um you could use it as a way to not get smudges all over the screen uh I at that point you could buy a cheaper stylus that just emulates your finger I think and it would do just as good of a job the the real advantage of the pencil is the technical capabilities of it understanding pressure and tilt and that sort of thing and is it is the pencil perfect um I mean I you know I think Mikey would be better to answer that one because I uh I think it's great but I don't draw so okay Mikey um yeah well it's not perfect because there's no perfect app out there yet um there's a few I mean so what's what's the hardest thing about using the pencil um the hardest thing about using it uh yeah what's what's what's the thing that that catches you out the most on it I guess the I guess well I mean it's the thing with all styluses right you're writing on a piece of you're writing plastic on glass so it's a odd feeling you don't have that uh you don't have that feedback or that that friction that kind of stops you from writing you know it's it it's a little fatiguing at times and it's just uh a bit unnatural um and I think it's better than other than sty in that it has a uh kind of it's not it's not a total rubber plastic you know it's not like a soft rubber plastic tip so it doesn't require a lot to get it going um but it is uh because it is a little bit harder it you're going to have to control everything with your hand you know you can't rely on a on a piece of paper like the the teeth or the the toothing on a piece of paper to bring your pencil to a stop you'd have to do that with your hand right now you said there was no perfect app can you tell me a little bit more about what you would expect from a perfect app or what's missing uh well I mean Apple's notes it's it's good right it it um supports tilt gestures supports tilt pressure and all that good stuff that pencil does right and there are a few good apps out there like uh Adobe sketch is pretty good good uh you can create some decent things with that but there are for uh for artists I think will you know it's kind of hard to make the jump if this is like their their first digital um drawing tool it it's a little it's not really I mean it's it's probably the most natural that I've seen including uh Wacom cintique but there is there that's there's still that Gap you can't like for example when you're sketching with a pencil uh on an adobe sketch or something you can't go ahead and smudge that um with real uh accuracy or uh you have to do that in in tool settings there's a smudge option there's a smudge tool that you can that you can bring up but um it doesn't it'll take a while to really dial that in to a point where it's mimicking natural um like your natural workflow uh so if there's an app that can somehow combine both uh writing with a pencil or apple pencil and also um bringing in like uh fingertip gestures like like smudging or something say in an intuitive way then that would be optimal um but I am very impressed with uh with other apps uh like pixel Mater is pretty good um what else is good actually all of adobe's apps are are fairly well thought out for apple pencil um they also they support pressure sensitivity and and tilt um but I did notice that it's not as uh fine-tuned as Apple's Notes app um for some reason it yeah it could be I mean it they they probably didn't have access to the pencil for very long before you know they had to get out those updates but I suspect a lot of other uh drawing minded apps will be taking advantage of it in the uh very near future it would also be cool to have like a like oil painting app that would um more realistically uh ape some of the some of the tools that people use you know like uh um besides the brushes uh like a like a palette or um other things you know it's a it's kind of hard but uh I think oil painting is probably a bit too much for for apple pencil at at this point so what should people know about before they go and buy the apple pencil is there some some advice some gotas or something that you think people should understand and know about I mean it works pretty well out of the box with everything that you would expect it to even apps that aren't made for the pencil so um when I got mine as luck would have one of the first things I had to do was fill out a a lengthy contract by hand and I don't really write very much if ever so the fact that that happened on that day was uh pure coincidence but um so I I loaded up on my iPad Pro and used the pencil and I used it with a PDF expert and it worked great I I don't know that PDF expert is like specifically updated for the pencil I don't know if that was uh part of it but um it uh yeah it it you know I just chose the size that I wanted to write with and Ed the pencil and uh the Palm rejection worked great and I just filled out the document and it looked just like my regular crappy handw WR I think it was it wasn't one of Apple's featured apps when the uh when itch maybe I didn't really notice anything specific in terms of pressure sensitivity or tilting or anything like that yeah PDF expert is pretty good so what are the best apps that you think people ought to try with the pencil first clearly Apple notes clearly you named the Adobe apps in general what what are the ones that people should go to for sure well it depends what they're doing right I mean if if they're doing any sort of art stuff uh adobe's Suite is uh probably one of the best options out there right now the only problem with that is that they're all separate apps right they're they break them out into drawing and photo editing and stuff like that um but really there's not a huge selection right now where that really truly take advantage of uh Apple pencil's capabilities so I would say play around with the notes app Adobe stuff um pixel Mater's good and beyond that I I wasn't really too impressed with the others and Neil you have any closing thoughts on the pencil for now uh you know I I impressed with it but I'm not a drawer so I can't see myself using it a lot okay yeah you're much more into the uh the keyboard yeah yeah I don't I avoid writing by hand whenever possible because my handwriting is terrible and I can actually read when I type and I can type faster than I can write so so we had big news in Apple pay right we had two things happen we had Square launching an NFC Car Mobile card reader with Apple pay support and we also had in London MasterCard offer londoners uh free Monday rides for using Apple pay so F first of all I'm going to just go into this I've got some questions so Neil I mean what's better about using Apple pay versus EMV or chip card I mean you can have all your cards on one phone and using EMV is kind of a pain in the butt where you have to insert it into that little slot where it reads the chip and then wait for it to authorize and then blah blah blah with Apple pay you just tap and go so I've been going around and at all the retailers I've seen that are supporting Apple pay or supporting uh contactless NFC payments you know the the Apple pay the the Android pay things like this I I have seen signage whether it's handrawn by the retail employees themselves or actually put in place by the stores you know nice printed proper signage saying we have a new retail system please bear with us and and here are the steps for actually using the chip slot um you know at Trader Joe's this morning I was there and they've each of their employees has handd drawn a thing they've pasted on top of the ver the verone reader saying please bear with us and let us help you um at Target there was a piece of signage that had been printed up by Target that had steps for how to use the MV slot I get the sense that it is really weird for the consumer and causing a lot of problems so I I wanted to ask if you guys had that kind of experience I haven't really but I'm not really a uh I'm not really a someone to look at because we don't don't really have that many Alternatives in Hawaii I mean we do we're starting to get them but I think Neil who lives in a major Metropolis would see uh be more uh offer a little more information on the subject yeah I mean there's some quirks at some places like I have a Subway right across the street that uh Subway sandwich shop not a subway station uh that has Apple pay enabled but their terminal is like on the other side of the counter as part of their kiosk so like you can't really use it in there they have it the sign in the door says hey we take Apple pay but they just don't have it set up in a functional way um you know places like Trader Joe's work great all the cabs work great my perspective is that Apple pay is way better than the chip card and I I think it's really cool that square is launching their reader because it means that there will be more retailers able to take Apple pay the thing that was curious to me about these two stories the one the second story was the one that was weird for me where so people in London have been using NFC transactions for the tube for ages they've had the Oyster card and they just tap the Oyster card on the Turn Style and walk through so why is Mastercard doing this promotion where they're offering londoners free rides using Apple pay to get people to use MasterCard is that their whole aim there is to try and just increase MasterCard adoption I mean yeah you would think you know uh discover was late to adopt Apple pay in the US and they responded by offering three months of 10% cash back on all purchases with Apple pay until the end of the year so you know some of these uh companies want to do and uh MasterCard in the US had that promotion where you could win stuff if you used Apple pay the Priceless Memories or whatever they called it so yeah these credit card companies are just doing what they can to drive adoption they want to become the default card on your Apple pay they want to be as frictionless as possible in making transactions do you think that that Apple pay is is uh more secure for them is sort of like the preferred path not only to be the default card but they want you to be using Apple pay to do it yeah because it's it's secure for them so they they're going to deal with less fraudulent trans actions and if you're a good upstanding credit card member uh they're going to eat the cost if your credit card number gets stolen so you know they don't they don't want that to happen so you're not going to end up with a stolen credit card number if you're using Apple pay so it's in their best interest to embrace it as well I I think when they move to Apple pay and they move to um right so you're right when they move to Apple pay and they move to EMV the credit card company is the one that's liable if they're still doing swipe transactions it becomes the retailer that's liable yeah I mean after the October switch basically what the credit card companies said was we're not going to handle the costs anymore if you don't upgrade to the latest technology so they want everybody on NFC or on uh EMV I I feel like that transition is going pretty slowly and pretty Rocky that's just my I it's anecdotal to be expected I mean there's a lot of uh points of sale out there yeah and I I just think it hasn't you know I still go to places that don't even have this the uh EMV slot enabled yet yeah so Mikey yes Victor you reviewed the Apple watch magnetic charging dock yes I did first of all do you like it I do actually surprisingly I kind of wanted to I kind wanted to not like it because uh I don't know selling a um $80 dock is is a bold move to say the least you're saying it's it's potentially overpriced well I mean that's what what in yes in perspective to its other docs it's basically the same price as far as you know the new aluminum iPhone docks that come in three different colors it's it's identically priced it's the same um because it comes with a 2 m long lightning cord so I mean it's a kind of value added thing but um the package I mean you know packaging them together is makes the price what like one what what is the what is the cheapest watch at right now on um I know they're having some Black Friday sales I think Best Buy is having $100 off all of the watches yeah so that one so that makes it a pretty huge chunk of a actual watch right so um yeah so it it is kind of I don't know I feel like maybe I wanted to dislike it but I didn't um and mainly for the reason that it is actually very handy compared to the other watch docks that I've tried out I mean um you just slap the thing down and it has integrated charging puck that you don't have to put in so you know it's already built in doesn't have those like weird wire routing things going on Apple's done that for you um and you can also charge it sitting up in nightstand mode uh just flip the puck up and you're good to go but I think the thing I was most impressed about is its design um I know the design is very personal you thing you have opinions on it I don't know what do you you think about design the the design just looking at it in pictures Victor well I'm glad you asked I um I haven't found many stands that I've liked this one seems like it was it was an attempt at complete reductionism right all you get as a circle pad and the circle charging puck and that's kind of it if you look closer I mean it's obviously designed by well obviously but I mean it's pretty obvious it was designed by Mark new right it takes after his designs while he was at uh well at his other company um yeah IOD IOD pronounce it uh he's had products that look almost exactly the same um and that's not a bad thing really it is a departure from Apple's other designs you know the the Johnny IV style um flat surfaces and you know rounded edges bevels chamfered edges and rounded bevels and stuff like that so it's kind of a refreshing change and it does a lot to help set Apple watch off aside from Apple's other products like iPhone and iPad it's it it does a lot to help it stand out on its own and it kind of speaks to Apple's uh New Direction of you creating a true fashion product something that can be sold as a fashion accessory instead of um you know something that's purely just a pretty piece of technology let me ask you a little bit about this so what what's the texture of the most of the surface well the top is kind of like a soft touch rubber it feels similar to um like their I don't know it's kind of weird but you know they larger cords that connect uh the IMAX and stuff like that it's kind of like that except with a slight slight texture to it so it's kind of soft and the uh it extends past the edge the perimeter so that there's a little ring of that's sort of a little like it's kind of like you know if you pinched if you pinched off um like a piece of ravioli or something right is is that lip heat sealed at all um I think it is I can't tell for certain cuz I didn't take it apart but uh it looks to be that way it looks like uh kind of like flashing I don't know if you're yeah yeah that's the part I don't like you don't like that yeah I I didn't like that at first either because it was very non Apple it seemed um kind of unnecessary turn off your T Mikey why do you keep it's in the other room you guys can hear that okay it's off so um yeah that flash is is a little bit irritating to me you said it was iritating it was but then I realized you know that it's it act it really works well with the design and it does a lot to make it Stand Out Among Apple's other products it's very non-apple right it's like you don't see those kinds of flourishes Elsewhere in Apple's product lineup so it kind of is in your face saying that you know this is not the usual the usual thing I'm I'm torn here I like the way that the charging puck flips up I like that the little hinge out of the the center circular ring and the whole mirrored finish to it that part looks very nice that looks like jewelry but the the lip and the the sort of heat sealed look to it just feels like cheap and unfinished to me so yeah it looks a little different in real life um I think it does work well with it when you see the materials and all that good stuff up close uh in pictures it does look a little cheapy better in real life than in photograph but I mean you know go down check it out if you're interested in it um I recommend seeing one firsthand what's it cost $80 what does it the the is it 80 yeah yeah yeah it is yeah it's way too much money yeah well I mean when you consider that I mean you have the $30 charging cable with it it comes out to $50 so it's basically fif but it's not a charging it's just a lightning cable yeah which Apple sells for a really long light C so it's a lightning cable that plugs into the dock and then the dock itself has the lightning charger on it so it's not like you could bring it with you on the go and have like a nice portable I mean you already have a cable I guess that came with your watch but still yeah well I mean it's the same look if you take away the cable right it becomes $50 it's a $50 charger and unlike uh but you can't you have to buy it with the with the cable you have to buy them together you're you're doing the breakdown to see what the bill of materials feels like well not only that I'm just you break it down to okay well think about it this way um you can't use it with the uh it'll be difficult to use it with the lightning cable that it the watch came with you can't use it with the cable the watch no but you can use this I don't have to use their 2 m long cable right I can bring any other apple lightning cable and plug it in there it's just got a port on the side right is there anything special about their 2m long cable other than the fact that it's longer is it better made no they just packaged a 2 met Cable in there with it does it have better strain release on it no it's the same it's just a 2 m cable without the white box packaging that usually comes in they have a huge cable with the iPad Pro how long is that cable like 5 or 6t or something so it's it's the same 2 m cable it's good for you know around your nightstand Etc and you also have to you know uh the puck itself if you it's integrated into the dock right so right in that sense it's a bit more of a value proposition compared to their iPhone cables or their iPhone docks which are pieces of aluminum with a lightning connector sticking up the top so it's a bit more techn technology in the dock itself okay so so how you just you're starting to get there but I want to just to ask it how is this better than the third party stand um the the puck is integrated so so you don't have to try and put it in you don't have to try that that part alone Mak you're not going to get that weird you know you're going to you're not going to lose whatever amount of cable it it takes to put into the route around and you know slap it on some of the docks come with hidden cable routing things so you can wrap the cable around a bunch of times so you don't have put all a bunch of extra Slack are you thinking of the Griffin one yeah yeah what are some of the other ones we looked at um I have one from somebody else it's very I think they charged like 60 bucks for it when it came out and we reviewed it here on the podcast and it was the first one out and my take on it was I mean if you want to spend $60 on a dock I mean you'll be happy but it's not worth $60 yeah I for who was it it it wasn't the Griffin one it was uh we got to the Griffin one second was it m or somebody there was an aluminum one that we had yeah it was an aluminum dock let me see if I can find it yeah but the thing is integrated the puck is integrated into the Apple One um and there's a small you know just regular wire going into the base and then it routes to the lightning connector Port so you you came to this m Apple watch Doc is what it is and okay it launched in May it was the first one out and it was priced at $59.95 which is just way too much yeah so F first of all since we said that's way too much and this we we initially thought was too much what's what's the right price for a doc what should a doc I mean Apple should be the one that Mikey's got it should be 50 or 60 and what should 30 party ones 30 if they don't have their own cable 20 or 30 okay good to know so so the biggest benefit of getting this is that it's made by Apple and it comes with a really long cable and you get a second charger basically instead of having to reuse your initial Puck that came with your watch who should buy this thing should is there someone you have to recommend this to and say you know that's exactly who needs this thing I mean if you well I don't I it depends because I don't really use a dock right I mean Apple made it so I've kind of been trained to not use a doc because didn't come with one so I don't really use a doc Neil do you use a doc with your iPhone every night yeah I still I just panned it but I still use the Mofi one that they sent me they told me to keep it and um it sits on my nightstand and I use it because I I prefer having docks for my stuff I use an overpriced elevation dock too for my iPhone um and yeah I mean I like I just like having docks for my electronics so that they just kind of have a home when they're not in use and it's easier to find them that way I know where my phone is I know where my watch is all that kind of stuff did you get the doc for your new Apple TV Siri remote no I didn't get that oh have you seen that one yeah I saw it you know I probably should quite Frank I don't want to mount it the thing on the TV but a place to put the remote would be nice so I don't lose the thing yeah cool that's that's the stocking stuffer I'll get that for you who should have this completionists people that need a second place to charge it is there any any reason that you can identify someone and say that that's who should have this thing rich people people who have an extra $80 to spend on an Apple Watch accessory um I don't know I mean I think people who purchase the Apple watch would be interested in this not like you and you and me uh people that write about tech or love technology and stuff like that they might not be interested but people who buy it for the fashion aspect of it probably would be people who would want to check it out I mean it is a nice little accessory to put on your table today's Apple Insider podcast is brought to you by Canary a complete home security system in a single device since launching early this year people across the world have been using Canary to stop burglaries and other serious incidents and what Canary really is at its heart is a internet connected camera with uh internet storage so it's got a 1080p camera with a wide angle lens motion detection and night vision and you can watch your home live at any time it will sense smart notifications it's got an algorithm so with motion detection it will send out notifications to you that something out of the ordinary is happening at home and it's got a siren it's got a 90 dbel siren which is loud enough to to 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those of us who don't live in New York City or San Francisco I don't know that venmo is limited in New York City or San Francisco it's used pretty much everywhere um it's it's started on college campuses it's a frictionless way to send money to people and basically the way that it works is you know you go to the movies with your friend and you don't have any cash and they pay for it and you want to pay them back so you just ven them the money it ties into your bank account and they get the money and everybody's happy um I Ran So what happens what happens when you use P2P with with venmo with people you don't know well if you if you use venmo the thing is venmo because of the way Banks work it takes two to three days for a transfer to take place so venmo essentially fronts the money they say okay we'll put the money in there and when your bank clears it then it'll be that money that we'll take uh what happens is uh if someone sends money that they don't have in their account uh you the recipient end up being the one that gets screwed so the reason you shouldn't use venmo with people that that you don't know it's actually in their terms of service that they don't want using with people you don't know is because scammers can do things like buy things from you and transfer you the money and it looks like you have the money and then a month later or two months later you find out the money never came through and venmo which doesn't guarantee purchases says too bad and that's it so I experienced this this week I'm in the process of moving and was selling a couple old iPhones that I just never got around to selling and I was pretty stupid about it and I saw a transfer show up with money from venmo it looked like it was in my account it was through the official app got an alert from venmo I got an email from venmo it all checked out and at that point you almost feel pressured because it's like well you paid me the money here you go take the phones so uh yeah it looked like I had the money and I was stupid and I didn't look into it but something about it seemed suspicious you know guy was willing to send me money without even and haven't looked at the phones so um I started Googling just cuz I knew something wasn't right and that was when I found out how the scam works so people I guess just set it up with fake bank accounts or something and there's money that isn't in the account but they transfer it to you and Veno takes a few days to figure out the money is in the account and then you never get the money and then you're out two iPhones and venmo says contact the person you did the transaction with it's not our fault yeah they have no claim uh department so I looked into it and there was an article that uh slate had done a couple months ago where they talked about one guy who sold NBA tickets and ended up out like $2,500 and they contacted venmo and they didn't get their money back so this happened to me Monday night I contacted venmo that evening they said that they would hand it over to their investigation department the next day um I was writing a story about it just as a PSA just to let people know because I talked to my friends about it and nobody knew that you're not supposed to use venmo with people you don't know everybody was like I've never heard of this so I I reached out to venmo from my work email account and just said hey working on a story on this was affected by this last night and just want to let people know so they know the policies of venmo about an hour after that um the in the venmo app I got an alert from their investigation department saying they had credited me the money that I was owed um and then they sent me a quote after that so you can draw your own conclusions about that my uh um suggestion to people that are listening is uh don't expect that you're going to get your money credited to you from venmo because they don't promise it and they're not obligated to and so I would imagine that in many cases they're just not going to um I don't know how often or in what circumstances or how they decide to refund people their money I I didn't ask them to as the managing editor of appal Insider I asked them to as a just a user of their service then I asked them for a quote as the managing Eder of Apple Insider at least with different email addresses so um that's kind of the way things played out and you know just want to be transparent with everybody when we write this kind of stuff this wasn't meant to be an endorsement or slamming of venmo it's just more of a we know you're out there using venmo because it's convenient just be careful when you're using it the reason that people like to use venmo especially when it got started in college campuses is how frictionless it is the sign up process is very easy and in making the signup process easy you don't have to uh verify as many things like how much money is in a bank account for example so yes it's easy and convenient to use venmo but that comes with inherent security risks that some users may not realize so that was just why with we put the PSA out there just so people knew that don't do business on Craigslist with VMO it's a bad idea yeah so let me ask what is safe to use what what would you recommend people do for person-to person transfers cash with strangers cash cash is good I know that some people the way that square cash works is different because it handles it as a credit card transaction and there's no fee to the user um so maybe that's safer but I honestly haven't looked into it enough I've used square cash but with friends friends I've never used it with a random person and I've never been scammed on it so I don't know um I do know from experience that the way that venmo operates allows people to scam like that so you shouldn't use it with people you don't know uh square cash supposedly people in comments and on Twitter were saying that it's more secure because of the way it works but I'm hesitant to hand out a um endorsement like that because I have not personally looked into it and I don't know um if you could scam with it and I think it's just a good rule of thumb don't use these services to exchange money with people you don't know stick with cash if it's somebody you don't know and you're selling something on Craigslist or just you know take a little bit of a loss and sell it through a service that does back up what they say like a StubHub or a um you know if you were to uh sell sell something to Amazon or something like that when they do buybacks on phones stuff like that uh you're probably better off you're not going to make as much money but at least you know that they're backed by a corporation that guarantees what they say right um square cash PayPal Google Wallet are always do person to person but your recommendation is play it safe we can't endorse any of those because we don't know the the paths for I think they're great with your friends but if you can go over to your buddy's house and knock on the door and be like hey how come you didn't send me the money you owe me that's a little different than some guy on Craigslist who has a burner number on his phone yes well awesome I'm so glad you uh you got it resolved in your favor and I'm so glad that uh you brought this this PSA to our yeah it was a relief I'll tell you that I believe it how how many iPhones were you selling two of two iPhone 6es that's that's money how much do those go for $950 yeah I'm glad that was resolved 128 gig and 64 gig phones wow well this has been the Apple Insider podcast I've been your host Victor marks and with us we've had managing editor Neil Hughes hey Neil where can people find you on the internet you can find me on Twitter at this is Neil and you can read me at Apple Insider Mikey Campbell thank you so much for contributing this week where can people find you on internet Mikey Campell 81 Twitter and on Apple Insider brilliant well if Neil sells all of his iPhones next week we'll be sure to tell you about it on next week's Apple Insider podcast uh Happy Thanksgiving to those of our listeners in the US and as a reminder please feel free to check out appleinsider.com for Black Friday specials on Friday this episode is brought to you by Canary a complete home security system in a single device when Canary detects something out of the ordinary it sends intelligent notifications with HD video straight to your phone Canary puts you in control during an emergency through the canary app you can watch live footage sound to built-in siren or connect with the police near your home start protecting your home with Canary today for just $199 go to meet canary.com and use the promo code Insider to get free overnight shipping heyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to episode 44 of our show where we discuss the latest news about Apple iPhone iPad mac Apple watch Apple TV and more we're recording on Wednesday November 25th 2015 I want to ask all of our USA listeners to go to appleinsider.com on Friday for an exclusive offer the deal is this you get a free 32 GB Apple TV with the purchase of any 2015 MacBook Pro Plus up to $230 in additional discounts per model with no tax in 48 states this is one uping our offer from last year this Black Friday Apple Insider has teamed with one of Apple's top authorized resellers to knock $30 to $111 off of all 2015 13-inch MacBook Pros and 71 to $230 off of all 2015 15-in MacBook Pros and then throw in a brand new fourth generation 32 GB Apple TV on top of those discounts for free plus free shipping and no tax in 48 states be sure to go to appleinsider.com on Friday for this and more discounts so Neil one of the other sponsors of today's shows is uh Mac Welden and Mac Welden makes all kinds of of apparel Goods t-shirts socks undergarments things like that and they uh they wanted to sponsor the show and they wanted us to talk sort of extemporaneously about their kind of product and uh and how it's related to to you know our sort of lives and I wanted to start out by just throwing this out there did did you ever have anyone ever give you socks for Christmas yes and what was your reaction when you got socks for Christmas uh usually they were bought as a joke gift oh okay so it was totally a joke you knew it was a joke kind of thing yeah okay I remember being like seven years old and getting socks as a gift from an aunt and being really kind of put out that that this this was the gift that you give me and that was like the only gift from this aunt and you know Co cool person but I only learned that as an adult that she was a cool person for for the longest time as a kid I I just like like what the heck was that you know so do we agree that socks are kind of a a boring and jokey kind of gift right yes I would agree with that Mikey you think the same way um I suppose Mikey is there a irance under which you want to get socks for a gift I don't know man socks socks are pretty cool well that's that's exactly what Ma Weldon wants us to think is is that they think they've taken socks from being this boring jokey kind of gift into being something that's a top-of-the-line gift that you should feel good about and what they're doing is they're using smart design they're using premium fabrics and they're trying to make it interesting they're trying to make it something that you're glad to get and all of their Fabrics are naturally antimicrobial which means they don't stink so no more stinky socks and one of the things that I like about the shopping experience with them because I've been trying out and looking through their web store is that if you don't like the first pair you can keep it and they will still refund you without asking questions so it's it's really uh a lowrisk proposition you just go ahead and place your order and if you don't like it you keep the first pair and all of our listeners can go to mackweldon.com and get 20% off using the promo code Insider so who know know maybe socks would be a cool gift this year now I want to jump into the topics we had our Impressions post this week about the apple pencil so we had our first look with it uh Neil is that yours yeah I got my hands on it last week and uh got to Doodle around with it a little bit so you you we got the first look article and we also had an article about what you can and cannot do with an apple pencil on the iPad Pro so so tell us about that what what can you do and what can you not do with the apple pencil well when the pencil was uh not quite in the hands of everybody yet there were some people in our comments that uh had heard rumors that you couldn't do certain things or whatever like you couldn't launch apps with it or use it on the home screen or things like that that's not true you can do all that kind of stuff you can type on a keyboard with it you could use a swipe keyboard for one-handed typing if you wanted um all that stuff works there are certain things that don't work like uh obviously any five finger gestures like for multitasking you can't do uh none of the edge gestures work so you can't do slide over um you can't resize windows in split view you can't bring up control center or bring down the notification center um you have to use your finger for those but other than that uh it works basically as you'd expect uh even Palm Rec uh Palm rejection I should say works with apps that aren't designed for the pencil so so what are the best uses of the pencil I mean obviously for drawing but I I suppose if you really wanted a stylus um you could use it as a way to not get smudges all over the screen uh I at that point you could buy a cheaper stylus that just emulates your finger I think and it would do just as good of a job the the real advantage of the pencil is the technical capabilities of it understanding pressure and tilt and that sort of thing and is it is the pencil perfect um I mean I you know I think Mikey would be better to answer that one because I uh I think it's great but I don't draw so okay Mikey um yeah well it's not perfect because there's no perfect app out there yet um there's a few I mean so what's what's the hardest thing about using the pencil um the hardest thing about using it uh yeah what's what's what's the thing that that catches you out the most on it I guess the I guess well I mean it's the thing with all styluses right you're writing on a piece of you're writing plastic on glass so it's a odd feeling you don't have that uh you don't have that feedback or that that friction that kind of stops you from writing you know it's it it's a little fatiguing at times and it's just uh a bit unnatural um and I think it's better than other than sty in that it has a uh kind of it's not it's not a total rubber plastic you know it's not like a soft rubber plastic tip so it doesn't require a lot to get it going um but it is uh because it is a little bit harder it you're going to have to control everything with your hand you know you can't rely on a on a piece of paper like the the teeth or the the toothing on a piece of paper to bring your pencil to a stop you'd have to do that with your hand right now you said there was no perfect app can you tell me a little bit more about what you would expect from a perfect app or what's missing uh well I mean Apple's notes it's it's good right it it um supports tilt gestures supports tilt pressure and all that good stuff that pencil does right and there are a few good apps out there like uh Adobe sketch is pretty good good uh you can create some decent things with that but there are for uh for artists I think will you know it's kind of hard to make the jump if this is like their their first digital um drawing tool it it's a little it's not really I mean it's it's probably the most natural that I've seen including uh Wacom cintique but there is there that's there's still that Gap you can't like for example when you're sketching with a pencil uh on an adobe sketch or something you can't go ahead and smudge that um with real uh accuracy or uh you have to do that in in tool settings there's a smudge option there's a smudge tool that you can that you can bring up but um it doesn't it'll take a while to really dial that in to a point where it's mimicking natural um like your natural workflow uh so if there's an app that can somehow combine both uh writing with a pencil or apple pencil and also um bringing in like uh fingertip gestures like like smudging or something say in an intuitive way then that would be optimal um but I am very impressed with uh with other apps uh like pixel Mater is pretty good um what else is good actually all of adobe's apps are are fairly well thought out for apple pencil um they also they support pressure sensitivity and and tilt um but I did notice that it's not as uh fine-tuned as Apple's Notes app um for some reason it yeah it could be I mean it they they probably didn't have access to the pencil for very long before you know they had to get out those updates but I suspect a lot of other uh drawing minded apps will be taking advantage of it in the uh very near future it would also be cool to have like a like oil painting app that would um more realistically uh ape some of the some of the tools that people use you know like uh um besides the brushes uh like a like a palette or um other things you know it's a it's kind of hard but uh I think oil painting is probably a bit too much for for apple pencil at at this point so what should people know about before they go and buy the apple pencil is there some some advice some gotas or something that you think people should understand and know about I mean it works pretty well out of the box with everything that you would expect it to even apps that aren't made for the pencil so um when I got mine as luck would have one of the first things I had to do was fill out a a lengthy contract by hand and I don't really write very much if ever so the fact that that happened on that day was uh pure coincidence but um so I I loaded up on my iPad Pro and used the pencil and I used it with a PDF expert and it worked great I I don't know that PDF expert is like specifically updated for the pencil I don't know if that was uh part of it but um it uh yeah it it you know I just chose the size that I wanted to write with and Ed the pencil and uh the Palm rejection worked great and I just filled out the document and it looked just like my regular crappy handw WR I think it was it wasn't one of Apple's featured apps when the uh when itch maybe I didn't really notice anything specific in terms of pressure sensitivity or tilting or anything like that yeah PDF expert is pretty good so what are the best apps that you think people ought to try with the pencil first clearly Apple notes clearly you named the Adobe apps in general what what are the ones that people should go to for sure well it depends what they're doing right I mean if if they're doing any sort of art stuff uh adobe's Suite is uh probably one of the best options out there right now the only problem with that is that they're all separate apps right they're they break them out into drawing and photo editing and stuff like that um but really there's not a huge selection right now where that really truly take advantage of uh Apple pencil's capabilities so I would say play around with the notes app Adobe stuff um pixel Mater's good and beyond that I I wasn't really too impressed with the others and Neil you have any closing thoughts on the pencil for now uh you know I I impressed with it but I'm not a drawer so I can't see myself using it a lot okay yeah you're much more into the uh the keyboard yeah yeah I don't I avoid writing by hand whenever possible because my handwriting is terrible and I can actually read when I type and I can type faster than I can write so so we had big news in Apple pay right we had two things happen we had Square launching an NFC Car Mobile card reader with Apple pay support and we also had in London MasterCard offer londoners uh free Monday rides for using Apple pay so F first of all I'm going to just go into this I've got some questions so Neil I mean what's better about using Apple pay versus EMV or chip card I mean you can have all your cards on one phone and using EMV is kind of a pain in the butt where you have to insert it into that little slot where it reads the chip and then wait for it to authorize and then blah blah blah with Apple pay you just tap and go so I've been going around and at all the retailers I've seen that are supporting Apple pay or supporting uh contactless NFC payments you know the the Apple pay the the Android pay things like this I I have seen signage whether it's handrawn by the retail employees themselves or actually put in place by the stores you know nice printed proper signage saying we have a new retail system please bear with us and and here are the steps for actually using the chip slot um you know at Trader Joe's this morning I was there and they've each of their employees has handd drawn a thing they've pasted on top of the ver the verone reader saying please bear with us and let us help you um at Target there was a piece of signage that had been printed up by Target that had steps for how to use the MV slot I get the sense that it is really weird for the consumer and causing a lot of problems so I I wanted to ask if you guys had that kind of experience I haven't really but I'm not really a uh I'm not really a someone to look at because we don't don't really have that many Alternatives in Hawaii I mean we do we're starting to get them but I think Neil who lives in a major Metropolis would see uh be more uh offer a little more information on the subject yeah I mean there's some quirks at some places like I have a Subway right across the street that uh Subway sandwich shop not a subway station uh that has Apple pay enabled but their terminal is like on the other side of the counter as part of their kiosk so like you can't really use it in there they have it the sign in the door says hey we take Apple pay but they just don't have it set up in a functional way um you know places like Trader Joe's work great all the cabs work great my perspective is that Apple pay is way better than the chip card and I I think it's really cool that square is launching their reader because it means that there will be more retailers able to take Apple pay the thing that was curious to me about these two stories the one the second story was the one that was weird for me where so people in London have been using NFC transactions for the tube for ages they've had the Oyster card and they just tap the Oyster card on the Turn Style and walk through so why is Mastercard doing this promotion where they're offering londoners free rides using Apple pay to get people to use MasterCard is that their whole aim there is to try and just increase MasterCard adoption I mean yeah you would think you know uh discover was late to adopt Apple pay in the US and they responded by offering three months of 10% cash back on all purchases with Apple pay until the end of the year so you know some of these uh companies want to do and uh MasterCard in the US had that promotion where you could win stuff if you used Apple pay the Priceless Memories or whatever they called it so yeah these credit card companies are just doing what they can to drive adoption they want to become the default card on your Apple pay they want to be as frictionless as possible in making transactions do you think that that Apple pay is is uh more secure for them is sort of like the preferred path not only to be the default card but they want you to be using Apple pay to do it yeah because it's it's secure for them so they they're going to deal with less fraudulent trans actions and if you're a good upstanding credit card member uh they're going to eat the cost if your credit card number gets stolen so you know they don't they don't want that to happen so you're not going to end up with a stolen credit card number if you're using Apple pay so it's in their best interest to embrace it as well I I think when they move to Apple pay and they move to um right so you're right when they move to Apple pay and they move to EMV the credit card company is the one that's liable if they're still doing swipe transactions it becomes the retailer that's liable yeah I mean after the October switch basically what the credit card companies said was we're not going to handle the costs anymore if you don't upgrade to the latest technology so they want everybody on NFC or on uh EMV I I feel like that transition is going pretty slowly and pretty Rocky that's just my I it's anecdotal to be expected I mean there's a lot of uh points of sale out there yeah and I I just think it hasn't you know I still go to places that don't even have this the uh EMV slot enabled yet yeah so Mikey yes Victor you reviewed the Apple watch magnetic charging dock yes I did first of all do you like it I do actually surprisingly I kind of wanted to I kind wanted to not like it because uh I don't know selling a um $80 dock is is a bold move to say the least you're saying it's it's potentially overpriced well I mean that's what what in yes in perspective to its other docs it's basically the same price as far as you know the new aluminum iPhone docks that come in three different colors it's it's identically priced it's the same um because it comes with a 2 m long lightning cord so I mean it's a kind of value added thing but um the package I mean you know packaging them together is makes the price what like one what what is the what is the cheapest watch at right now on um I know they're having some Black Friday sales I think Best Buy is having $100 off all of the watches yeah so that one so that makes it a pretty huge chunk of a actual watch right so um yeah so it it is kind of I don't know I feel like maybe I wanted to dislike it but I didn't um and mainly for the reason that it is actually very handy compared to the other watch docks that I've tried out I mean um you just slap the thing down and it has integrated charging puck that you don't have to put in so you know it's already built in doesn't have those like weird wire routing things going on Apple's done that for you um and you can also charge it sitting up in nightstand mode uh just flip the puck up and you're good to go but I think the thing I was most impressed about is its design um I know the design is very personal you thing you have opinions on it I don't know what do you you think about design the the design just looking at it in pictures Victor well I'm glad you asked I um I haven't found many stands that I've liked this one seems like it was it was an attempt at complete reductionism right all you get as a circle pad and the circle charging puck and that's kind of it if you look closer I mean it's obviously designed by well obviously but I mean it's pretty obvious it was designed by Mark new right it takes after his designs while he was at uh well at his other company um yeah IOD IOD pronounce it uh he's had products that look almost exactly the same um and that's not a bad thing really it is a departure from Apple's other designs you know the the Johnny IV style um flat surfaces and you know rounded edges bevels chamfered edges and rounded bevels and stuff like that so it's kind of a refreshing change and it does a lot to help set Apple watch off aside from Apple's other products like iPhone and iPad it's it it does a lot to help it stand out on its own and it kind of speaks to Apple's uh New Direction of you creating a true fashion product something that can be sold as a fashion accessory instead of um you know something that's purely just a pretty piece of technology let me ask you a little bit about this so what what's the texture of the most of the surface well the top is kind of like a soft touch rubber it feels similar to um like their I don't know it's kind of weird but you know they larger cords that connect uh the IMAX and stuff like that it's kind of like that except with a slight slight texture to it so it's kind of soft and the uh it extends past the edge the perimeter so that there's a little ring of that's sort of a little like it's kind of like you know if you pinched if you pinched off um like a piece of ravioli or something right is is that lip heat sealed at all um I think it is I can't tell for certain cuz I didn't take it apart but uh it looks to be that way it looks like uh kind of like flashing I don't know if you're yeah yeah that's the part I don't like you don't like that yeah I I didn't like that at first either because it was very non Apple it seemed um kind of unnecessary turn off your T Mikey why do you keep it's in the other room you guys can hear that okay it's off so um yeah that flash is is a little bit irritating to me you said it was iritating it was but then I realized you know that it's it act it really works well with the design and it does a lot to make it Stand Out Among Apple's other products it's very non-apple right it's like you don't see those kinds of flourishes Elsewhere in Apple's product lineup so it kind of is in your face saying that you know this is not the usual the usual thing I'm I'm torn here I like the way that the charging puck flips up I like that the little hinge out of the the center circular ring and the whole mirrored finish to it that part looks very nice that looks like jewelry but the the lip and the the sort of heat sealed look to it just feels like cheap and unfinished to me so yeah it looks a little different in real life um I think it does work well with it when you see the materials and all that good stuff up close uh in pictures it does look a little cheapy better in real life than in photograph but I mean you know go down check it out if you're interested in it um I recommend seeing one firsthand what's it cost $80 what does it the the is it 80 yeah yeah yeah it is yeah it's way too much money yeah well I mean when you consider that I mean you have the $30 charging cable with it it comes out to $50 so it's basically fif but it's not a charging it's just a lightning cable yeah which Apple sells for a really long light C so it's a lightning cable that plugs into the dock and then the dock itself has the lightning charger on it so it's not like you could bring it with you on the go and have like a nice portable I mean you already have a cable I guess that came with your watch but still yeah well I mean it's the same look if you take away the cable right it becomes $50 it's a $50 charger and unlike uh but you can't you have to buy it with the with the cable you have to buy them together you're you're doing the breakdown to see what the bill of materials feels like well not only that I'm just you break it down to okay well think about it this way um you can't use it with the uh it'll be difficult to use it with the lightning cable that it the watch came with you can't use it with the cable the watch no but you can use this I don't have to use their 2 m long cable right I can bring any other apple lightning cable and plug it in there it's just got a port on the side right is there anything special about their 2m long cable other than the fact that it's longer is it better made no they just packaged a 2 met Cable in there with it does it have better strain release on it no it's the same it's just a 2 m cable without the white box packaging that usually comes in they have a huge cable with the iPad Pro how long is that cable like 5 or 6t or something so it's it's the same 2 m cable it's good for you know around your nightstand Etc and you also have to you know uh the puck itself if you it's integrated into the dock right so right in that sense it's a bit more of a value proposition compared to their iPhone cables or their iPhone docks which are pieces of aluminum with a lightning connector sticking up the top so it's a bit more techn technology in the dock itself okay so so how you just you're starting to get there but I want to just to ask it how is this better than the third party stand um the the puck is integrated so so you don't have to try and put it in you don't have to try that that part alone Mak you're not going to get that weird you know you're going to you're not going to lose whatever amount of cable it it takes to put into the route around and you know slap it on some of the docks come with hidden cable routing things so you can wrap the cable around a bunch of times so you don't have put all a bunch of extra Slack are you thinking of the Griffin one yeah yeah what are some of the other ones we looked at um I have one from somebody else it's very I think they charged like 60 bucks for it when it came out and we reviewed it here on the podcast and it was the first one out and my take on it was I mean if you want to spend $60 on a dock I mean you'll be happy but it's not worth $60 yeah I for who was it it it wasn't the Griffin one it was uh we got to the Griffin one second was it m or somebody there was an aluminum one that we had yeah it was an aluminum dock let me see if I can find it yeah but the thing is integrated the puck is integrated into the Apple One um and there's a small you know just regular wire going into the base and then it routes to the lightning connector Port so you you came to this m Apple watch Doc is what it is and okay it launched in May it was the first one out and it was priced at $59.95 which is just way too much yeah so F first of all since we said that's way too much and this we we initially thought was too much what's what's the right price for a doc what should a doc I mean Apple should be the one that Mikey's got it should be 50 or 60 and what should 30 party ones 30 if they don't have their own cable 20 or 30 okay good to know so so the biggest benefit of getting this is that it's made by Apple and it comes with a really long cable and you get a second charger basically instead of having to reuse your initial Puck that came with your watch who should buy this thing should is there someone you have to recommend this to and say you know that's exactly who needs this thing I mean if you well I don't I it depends because I don't really use a dock right I mean Apple made it so I've kind of been trained to not use a doc because didn't come with one so I don't really use a doc Neil do you use a doc with your iPhone every night yeah I still I just panned it but I still use the Mofi one that they sent me they told me to keep it and um it sits on my nightstand and I use it because I I prefer having docks for my stuff I use an overpriced elevation dock too for my iPhone um and yeah I mean I like I just like having docks for my electronics so that they just kind of have a home when they're not in use and it's easier to find them that way I know where my phone is I know where my watch is all that kind of stuff did you get the doc for your new Apple TV Siri remote no I didn't get that oh have you seen that one yeah I saw it you know I probably should quite Frank I don't want to mount it the thing on the TV but a place to put the remote would be nice so I don't lose the thing yeah cool that's that's the stocking stuffer I'll get that for you who should have this completionists people that need a second place to charge it is there any any reason that you can identify someone and say that that's who should have this thing rich people people who have an extra $80 to spend on an Apple Watch accessory um I don't know I mean I think people who purchase the Apple watch would be interested in this not like you and you and me uh people that write about tech or love technology and stuff like that they might not be interested but people who buy it for the fashion aspect of it probably would be people who would want to check it out I mean it is a nice little accessory to put on your table today's Apple Insider podcast is brought to you by Canary a complete home security system in a single device since launching early this year people across the world have been using Canary to stop burglaries and other serious incidents and what Canary really is at its heart is a internet connected camera with uh internet storage so it's got a 1080p camera with a wide angle lens motion detection and night vision and you can watch your home live at any time it will sense smart notifications it's got an algorithm so with motion detection it will send out notifications to you that something out of the ordinary is happening at home and it's got a siren it's got a 90 dbel siren which is loud enough to to scare off Intruders um that's pretty earsplitting that is loud Canary also pulls in local police and fire department numbers near your home so if you're traveling you can quickly get in touch with the right people uh it arms and disarms when you come home and you can link up to four of them together in a location so it's easy to protect homes of all sizes it also monitors your homes temperature humidity air quality to protect you against the things that you can't see or here and it's got best-in-class night vision start protecting your home with Canary today for just $199 go to meet canary.com and use the promo code Insider to get free overnight shipping that's me canary.com and the promo code Insider Canary smart home security for everyone so we ran a PSA we ran a public service announcement on the site this week recommending that people not use person-to-person money transfer services like venmo with people that you do not know break it down for me first of all what is venmo for those of us who don't live in New York City or San Francisco I don't know that venmo is limited in New York City or San Francisco it's used pretty much everywhere um it's it's started on college campuses it's a frictionless way to send money to people and basically the way that it works is you know you go to the movies with your friend and you don't have any cash and they pay for it and you want to pay them back so you just ven them the money it ties into your bank account and they get the money and everybody's happy um I Ran So what happens what happens when you use P2P with with venmo with people you don't know well if you if you use venmo the thing is venmo because of the way Banks work it takes two to three days for a transfer to take place so venmo essentially fronts the money they say okay we'll put the money in there and when your bank clears it then it'll be that money that we'll take uh what happens is uh if someone sends money that they don't have in their account uh you the recipient end up being the one that gets screwed so the reason you shouldn't use venmo with people that that you don't know it's actually in their terms of service that they don't want using with people you don't know is because scammers can do things like buy things from you and transfer you the money and it looks like you have the money and then a month later or two months later you find out the money never came through and venmo which doesn't guarantee purchases says too bad and that's it so I experienced this this week I'm in the process of moving and was selling a couple old iPhones that I just never got around to selling and I was pretty stupid about it and I saw a transfer show up with money from venmo it looked like it was in my account it was through the official app got an alert from venmo I got an email from venmo it all checked out and at that point you almost feel pressured because it's like well you paid me the money here you go take the phones so uh yeah it looked like I had the money and I was stupid and I didn't look into it but something about it seemed suspicious you know guy was willing to send me money without even and haven't looked at the phones so um I started Googling just cuz I knew something wasn't right and that was when I found out how the scam works so people I guess just set it up with fake bank accounts or something and there's money that isn't in the account but they transfer it to you and Veno takes a few days to figure out the money is in the account and then you never get the money and then you're out two iPhones and venmo says contact the person you did the transaction with it's not our fault yeah they have no claim uh department so I looked into it and there was an article that uh slate had done a couple months ago where they talked about one guy who sold NBA tickets and ended up out like $2,500 and they contacted venmo and they didn't get their money back so this happened to me Monday night I contacted venmo that evening they said that they would hand it over to their investigation department the next day um I was writing a story about it just as a PSA just to let people know because I talked to my friends about it and nobody knew that you're not supposed to use venmo with people you don't know everybody was like I've never heard of this so I I reached out to venmo from my work email account and just said hey working on a story on this was affected by this last night and just want to let people know so they know the policies of venmo about an hour after that um the in the venmo app I got an alert from their investigation department saying they had credited me the money that I was owed um and then they sent me a quote after that so you can draw your own conclusions about that my uh um suggestion to people that are listening is uh don't expect that you're going to get your money credited to you from venmo because they don't promise it and they're not obligated to and so I would imagine that in many cases they're just not going to um I don't know how often or in what circumstances or how they decide to refund people their money I I didn't ask them to as the managing editor of appal Insider I asked them to as a just a user of their service then I asked them for a quote as the managing Eder of Apple Insider at least with different email addresses so um that's kind of the way things played out and you know just want to be transparent with everybody when we write this kind of stuff this wasn't meant to be an endorsement or slamming of venmo it's just more of a we know you're out there using venmo because it's convenient just be careful when you're using it the reason that people like to use venmo especially when it got started in college campuses is how frictionless it is the sign up process is very easy and in making the signup process easy you don't have to uh verify as many things like how much money is in a bank account for example so yes it's easy and convenient to use venmo but that comes with inherent security risks that some users may not realize so that was just why with we put the PSA out there just so people knew that don't do business on Craigslist with VMO it's a bad idea yeah so let me ask what is safe to use what what would you recommend people do for person-to person transfers cash with strangers cash cash is good I know that some people the way that square cash works is different because it handles it as a credit card transaction and there's no fee to the user um so maybe that's safer but I honestly haven't looked into it enough I've used square cash but with friends friends I've never used it with a random person and I've never been scammed on it so I don't know um I do know from experience that the way that venmo operates allows people to scam like that so you shouldn't use it with people you don't know uh square cash supposedly people in comments and on Twitter were saying that it's more secure because of the way it works but I'm hesitant to hand out a um endorsement like that because I have not personally looked into it and I don't know um if you could scam with it and I think it's just a good rule of thumb don't use these services to exchange money with people you don't know stick with cash if it's somebody you don't know and you're selling something on Craigslist or just you know take a little bit of a loss and sell it through a service that does back up what they say like a StubHub or a um you know if you were to uh sell sell something to Amazon or something like that when they do buybacks on phones stuff like that uh you're probably better off you're not going to make as much money but at least you know that they're backed by a corporation that guarantees what they say right um square cash PayPal Google Wallet are always do person to person but your recommendation is play it safe we can't endorse any of those because we don't know the the paths for I think they're great with your friends but if you can go over to your buddy's house and knock on the door and be like hey how come you didn't send me the money you owe me that's a little different than some guy on Craigslist who has a burner number on his phone yes well awesome I'm so glad you uh you got it resolved in your favor and I'm so glad that uh you brought this this PSA to our yeah it was a relief I'll tell you that I believe it how how many iPhones were you selling two of two iPhone 6es that's that's money how much do those go for $950 yeah I'm glad that was resolved 128 gig and 64 gig phones wow well this has been the Apple Insider podcast I've been your host Victor marks and with us we've had managing editor Neil Hughes hey Neil where can people find you on the internet you can find me on Twitter at this is Neil and you can read me at Apple Insider Mikey Campbell thank you so much for contributing this week where can people find you on internet Mikey Campell 81 Twitter and on Apple Insider brilliant well if Neil sells all of his iPhones next week we'll be sure to tell you about it on next week's Apple Insider podcast uh Happy Thanksgiving to those of our listeners in the US and as a reminder please feel free to check out appleinsider.com for Black Friday specials on Friday this episode is brought to you by Canary a complete home security system in a single device when Canary detects something out of the ordinary it sends intelligent notifications with HD video straight to your phone Canary puts you in control during an emergency through the canary app you can watch live footage sound to built-in siren or connect with the police near your home start protecting your home with Canary today for just $199 go to meet canary.com and use the promo code Insider to get free overnight shipping he\n"