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Use Venmo? Here’s what secrets people discovered thanks to the payment app
As with any payment application, you would assume that your transactions are private. However, that isn’t the case with Venmo if you don’t make this change to security settings. As researchers exposed their spending habits, several politicians found this out the hard way.
Read on to see what secrets people discovered thanks to the payment app and how to improve privacy.
Venmo gives away your spending habits
Venmo is an excellent way to quickly send someone money for your portion of the dinner bill or anything else you owe them for. But if you value privacy, you need to take action.
Some Venmo users were shocked to discover they could see what others were buying or who they were paying. Venmo updated its app in 2021, but few know their transactions are publicly visible to anyone, and it’s completely legal.
You can uncover secrets about your family or friends by simply looking at the activity feed on the app’s home screen.
One person told The Guardian he recently learned his girlfriend used his phone (and Venmo account) to send herself $20 every other day. Another found out her boyfriend secretly sent another girl money for birth control and date nights.
This was possible because they hadn’t set their transactions and activity feed to private.
How to hide Venmo payment activity
Setting your account to private is the best way to prevent someone from snooping on your transactions and money transfers. Here’s how:
- Open the Venmo app.
- Tap your profile in the lower-right corner.
- Tap the Settings icon in the upper-right corner.
- Select Privacy.
- Under Default Privacy Settings, select Private.
Changing this setting to private will make your transactions visible to the sender and recipient only. Just like that, you’ve taken back some of your privacy.
You can choose whether you want to appear in someone’s contact list. Following the steps above, under the Default Privacy Settings, select Public to have all transactions visible to everyone on the internet. Select Friends to have transactions visible to the sender, recipient and all their Venmo friends. Selecting Private is the most secure option.
Keep reading
If you got paid more than $600 through PayPal or Venmo this year, you might get a tax form
Have money sitting around in Venmo? Use it to pay for Amazon purchases
Tags: Amazon, internet, privacy, security, transactions, Venmo
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