“This Is a Reminder That You’re Probably Oversharing on Venmo”

Brian X. Chen, at the New York Times:

“Venmo has made the contacts list, which can be generated from your smartphone’s address book or your Facebook friends list, viewable to any other user on the app.

"That can make a lot of information public. In 2021, my colleague Ryan Mac, who was then at BuzzFeed News, used Venmo to discover President Biden’s account and personal contacts list. Mr. Biden later deleted his Venmo account.”

I really have never understood why anyone would want information about their payments made public. I resisted even signing up for Venmo for a long time, but acquiesced to friends and acquaintances who were using it. I immediately set my payment history to private, but the quote above led me to look at the “Privacy” section again. There are separate items in there about your Venmo contact list and its visibility that is separate from your transaction visibility. Take a minute to go make sure that all of it is set to private.