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Show HN: Venmo Unofficial API

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Re: Show HN: Venmo Unofficial API

#21

Post by colesantiago »

smashah wrote: post #11
Uehreka wrote: post #2

This will not end well. If someone with millions or billions of dollars doesn’t have an official API after operating for years, that’s because they don’t want to have one. You may receive a Cease and Desist letter, or they might block your IPs, or just scramble their markup in ways that are hard to figure out. Whatever their approach, they likely have more money and manpower to throw at stopping you than you have to…

This is legal. See Teller API. Venmo will most likely lose if they take these devs to court based on precedent. I don't like this trend of small time OSS devs being berated about legal bullying from megacorps, meanwhile handsomely VC-funded businesses get congratulated with legal help. We should be berating these companies of not releasing the APIs that people want to use! We're in an age of AI, built atop agents, ag…

Unfortunately it's all fun until Integruru or you get a cease and desist.

Will Integruru support you in your legal fight in court?

Most devs aren't ready to lawyer up.

Re: Show HN: Venmo Unofficial API

#22

Post by alanloo »

OptionOfT wrote: post #20
alanloo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question! You can get the bearer token from the cookies in the browser. We also offer a hosted service where we handle the entire integration (authentication and hosting).

Does that imply I need to give you my username and password?

If you're using your own account, you can just use your own authentication cookies, but they do expire. If you're providing these functionalities for others' accounts and if you're ok with users logging in every time for usage, then no. If you'd prefer maintaining the log-in session for others, then unfortunately yes. I know this isn't ideal, but this is the unfortunate nature of unofficial APIs.

Re: Show HN: Venmo Unofficial API

#23

Post by HeatrayEnjoyer »

colesantiago wrote: post #19

This is actually dangerous. This is how you see spammers, scammers and grifters target people with fake bots on most platforms and the producer i.e. Venmo traces it to an SDK and will kill all these unofficial API consumers. And once captchas are introduced it's over, I wouldn't be surprised if stuff like captchas would be implemented more into websites to stop scrapers for good.

Goody idea in 2014 but it is 2024 and AI capabilities defeat nearly all "Prove you are a human" challenges.

Re: Show HN: Venmo Unofficial API

#24

Post by elzbardico »

colesantiago wrote: post #21
smashah wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is legal. See Teller API. Venmo will most likely lose if they take these devs to court based on precedent. I don't like this trend of small time OSS devs being berated about legal bullying from megacorps, meanwhile handsomely VC-funded businesses get congratulated with legal help. We should be berating these companies of not releasing the APIs that people want to use! We're in an age of AI, built atop agents, ag…

Unfortunately it's all fun until Integruru or you get a cease and desist. Will Integruru support you in your legal fight in court? Most devs aren't ready to lawyer up.

You get a cease and desist letter, you cease and desist doing the stuff if you don't want / can't afford a legal fight.

Then you post the cease and desist letter on your website, and post about it on hacker news.

Re: Show HN: Venmo Unofficial API

#27

Post by benatkin »

gchamonlive wrote: post #7

To everyone criticizing this project, you should probably dig a bit to find out what's the context of this project. From the integuru page: > We build integrations with platforms lacking official APIs. We specialize in low-latency integrations via reverse-engineering. All integrations are open-source. So these warnings are probably wasted on someone that is very much aware of what he is doing.

Indeed. It also seems more like Plaid than ElcomSoft.

Re: Show HN: Venmo Unofficial API

#28

Post by Uehreka »

benatkin wrote: post #27
gchamonlive wrote: post #7

To everyone criticizing this project, you should probably dig a bit to find out what's the context of this project. From the integuru page: > We build integrations with platforms lacking official APIs. We specialize in low-latency integrations via reverse-engineering. All integrations are open-source. So these warnings are probably wasted on someone that is very much aware of what he is doing.

Indeed. It also seems more like Plaid than ElcomSoft.

If this is indeed like Plaid, a simple clause in the README would put a lot of people at ease (I looked carefully for this before making my comment): This Unofficial API was built with the express written consent of Venmo (or whatever their LLC is called).

It’s an easy thing to add to the README if it’s true. But if it’s not, that’s a problem.

Re: Show HN: Venmo Unofficial API

#29

Post by colesantiago »

HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #23
colesantiago wrote: post #19

This is actually dangerous. This is how you see spammers, scammers and grifters target people with fake bots on most platforms and the producer i.e. Venmo traces it to an SDK and will kill all these unofficial API consumers. And once captchas are introduced it's over, I wouldn't be surprised if stuff like captchas would be implemented more into websites to stop scrapers for good.

Goody idea in 2014 but it is 2024 and AI capabilities defeat nearly all "Prove you are a human" challenges.

> ...AI capabilities defeat nearly all "Prove you are a human" challenges

Not really, seeing lots of captchas from Arkose, Cloudflare, HCaptcha, etc keep up with this in stopping bots.

Re: Show HN: Venmo Unofficial API

#30

Post by nailer »

benatkin wrote: post #27
gchamonlive wrote: post #7

To everyone criticizing this project, you should probably dig a bit to find out what's the context of this project. From the integuru page: > We build integrations with platforms lacking official APIs. We specialize in low-latency integrations via reverse-engineering. All integrations are open-source. So these warnings are probably wasted on someone that is very much aware of what he is doing.

Indeed. It also seems more like Plaid than ElcomSoft.

Plaid use screen scraping which is why it breaks all the time. In terms of reverse engineering undocumented but official APIs, you’re thinking of their competitor Teller.
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