Stop exposing your Venmo activity - by changing this privacy setting. Here's why

1 week ago 8

If you're a Venmo user, you should probably review your privacy settings. If you haven't checked them before, your entire friends list and transaction history are public.

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You might wonder why it matters if someone can see that you sent a friend $10 when you split a pizza last month, but your Venmo account settings might be revealing more than you know.

What people can find on Venmo

By default, Venmo makes every payment and description public. The amount is hidden, but just by pulling up a few random friends, I was able to see the location of their kids' sports leagues, the name of a wedding venue for an upcoming ceremony, the name of a child's classmate at elementary school, and restaurants they frequent.

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Just as important of an issue, though, is that your friends list is public by default as well. Looking at my friends' contact lists, it wasn't hard to find their family members, coworkers, child's teachers, daycare workers, and more. Anyone could potentially exploit this -- online trolls, stalkers, ex-spouses, law enforcement (in 2019, federal prosecutors charged a man in the death of rapper Mac Miller partially through evidence shown in Venmo transactions), or criminals.

Several years ago, Buzzfeed was able to find the Venmo account for President Biden. The issue wasn't that the public could see that he sent his grandchildren money for their birthdays but that a whole web of contacts was visible, including family members and senior White House officials (and their contacts).

While researching for this article, I found public profiles for local politicians, several athletes from pro sports teams in my area, heads of local law enforcement organizations, local TV reporters, and more. Looking at each one, I got a decent feel for the people they're often with and the establishments they're often in.

Everything on Venmo is public by default because the social aspect was part of the early appeal of the app. From a privacy standpoint though, this is clearly an issue.

How to make your Venmo private

Making your Venmo private is simple. From your home screen, tap "Me" in the lower right corner, then tap "Settings" in the top right corner. Head to the "Privacy" section and you'll see three choices: "Public," which is visible to anyone, "Friends," which is only visible to the sender, the recipient, and their Venmo friends, and "Private," which is visible to the sender and recipient only.

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You can either make these changes for individual payments or for your whole account. You should do the latter. When you make this change, it only affects payments going forward. If you want to change the privacy of past payments, head to the same privacy section and select "Past Transactions."

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