{"id":50339,"date":"2026-05-12T18:51:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T18:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/venmo-still-isnt-taking-privacy-seriously\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T18:51:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T18:51:11","slug":"venmo-still-isnt-taking-privacy-seriously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/venmo-still-isnt-taking-privacy-seriously\/","title":{"rendered":"Venmo still isn&#8217;t taking privacy seriously"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6a024e82ba7ef34b41f3733b?format=jpeg\" alt=\"A Venmo feed with a green background.\"\/><figcaption>Venmo is doing a redesign, but it isn&#039;t fixing a huge privacy issue.<\/p>\n<p>Venmo<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Venmo has always been a privacy dumpster fire.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, it&#039;s changing privacy settings so new users&#039; transactions will be set to be seen by &quot;friends only.&quot;<\/li>\n<li>But your contacts are still public by default \u2014 which is a nightmare.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Call me a grouch, but I find it really hard to make any compelling argument for why anyone needs to see a feed of their friends&#039; activity on Venmo.<\/p>\n<p>Is it really so interesting seeing that your friend paid someone for pizza?<\/p>\n<p>Venmo&#039;s new redesign adds features that lean into that supposed social element. Transactions in your payments feed get larger images and even animated GIFs.<\/p>\n<p>I really wish Venmo would focus more on what users deserve \u2014 privacy by default! \u2014 instead of more emojis.<\/p>\n<p>The newest update finally does something Venmo should have done at least a decade ago: It makes the default setting for transactions &quot;visible to friends only&quot; instead of &quot;public&quot; for new users when they sign up for the app.<\/p>\n<p>Keep in mind that it isn&#039;t even really <em>private<\/em> \u2014 the default isn&#039;t set to &quot;only me.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>When I put my concerns to Venmo, the company said the new settings give people more choice.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Venmo customers have full control over what they share and who can see their activity, and the new app experience enhances how customers can manage their privacy settings,&quot; Erin Mackey, a spokesperson for Venmo, told Business Insider. &quot;New users will also default to &#039;friends only,&#039; reflecting what we heard from customers. Whether they prefer to share publicly, with friends, or keep their activity private, privacy settings are easy to find and update at any time.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>When Venmo first launched, having a social element seemed like a fun gimmick, a playful and cute relic of the early 2010s when adding a social layer to everything was a big trend. But in 2026, I have no idea why any reasonable person would want anyone \u2014 even friends \u2014 to view their financial transactions.<\/p>\n<h2>All your contacts are still public by default when you sign up<\/h2>\n<p>That&#039;s not even my biggest gripe. Venmo <em>isn&#039;t<\/em> making a change for its new users that I think it absolutely should: making friends lists private by default.<\/p>\n<p>Keep in mind there&#039;s no such thing as a &quot;private&quot; Venmo account \u2014 people can generally find your account if they have your name or phone number.(Although new users won&#039;t have transactions public to strangers by default anymore.) But there&#039;s another way that people can find you: by searching other people&#039;s friend lists.<\/p>\n<p>That&#039;s how, in 2021, my colleague found Joe Biden&#039;s personal Venmo account \u2014 combing through the contact lists of other White House affiliates and family. In 2024, Wired found Vice President JD Vance&#039;s Venmo account, which included all his public contacts.<\/p>\n<p>At the time, there was no way to make your contacts private \u2014 or to opt out of appearing in other people&#039;s contact lists. This was a huge privacy loophole \u2014 even if you kept your transactions private, people could find all sorts of information about you by seeing who your friends were.<\/p>\n<p>There are tons of examples of people who have been affected by this: people who were being stalked by an abusive ex, therapists, or sex workers whose client lists were made essentially public, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, after the Joe Biden incident, Venmo made a change and now allows people to make their contact lists private \u2014 but it&#039;s buried waaaaaaay deep in your user settings (here&#039;s a step-by-step guide on how to do it).<\/p>\n<p>But it&#039;s still not the default for new users, and most existing users probably don&#039;t know you can hide contacts. (Did you? I really, really recommend you do it now!)<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Venmo is doing a redesign, but it isn&#039;t fixing a huge privacy issue. Venmo Venmo has always been a privacy dumpster fire. Finally, it&#039;s changing privacy settings so new users&#039; transactions will be set to be seen by &quot;friends only.&quot; But your contacts are still public by default \u2014 which is a nightmare. Call me [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50340,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-50339","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}