We Truly Implore You to Keep Your Venmo Transactions Private
We found it interesting to choose the perfect emoji when sending or requesting money from friends on Venmo. It shouldn’t be that much fun, but somehow it is. But everyone needs to find a new way to have three seconds of joy, because you are putting yourself at risk if you haven’t set your Venmo account to “private”.
Newest scam aimed at users: a stream of payment requests from strangers. According to a BuzzFeed News report , users who have recently made public transactions receive a flood of requests for money and friendships in the app.
Requests ranged from $ 1 to $ 100 in the cases BuzzFeed studied, and most of the requests came from accounts with photographs of women; one account had a photo of the musician, but a different name was attached. Common denominator: Requests started coming in after a user made a public transaction.
If this mess sounds familiar, it’s because it is! In 2018, we pointed out how easy it is for someone to view your transactions Venmo and make judgments about your actions and, in some cases, decide to pay you money.
It also has a downside: someone you don’t know can send you money you don’t expect , either by mistake or for more nefarious reasons.
It all comes down to one big issue: Your Venmo transactions are open to the public. If you are thinking, “This is not me, I am more careful than this,” take a look at your account now.
Venmo makes the default “public” for each account, leaving you the right to modify your transactions (by default or individually) for in-app friends or just interested parties to view.
By publicly reporting that you’ve just sent or received money from someone, you’re showing everyone watching that you’re comfortable using the app and that you probably have an active Venmo balance.
Please do one tiny thing and make your transactions private. Venmo offers the following instructions for this:
To update your app’s sharing settings, make sure your app is updated to the latest version. Then click the “☰” icon in the upper left corner and click “Settings”. From there select “Privacy”. In the Default Privacy Settings section, select your preferred default privacy setting.
Venmo notes that if you complete a transaction with a user with a different privacy setting than yours, the stricter of the two will be enforced.
You can also hide your past payments because let’s face it, no one else needs to know that you tip your stylist on Venmo. For Venmo:
In the app, go to Settings -> Privacy and in the Past Transactions section select your preferences.
This is permanent and we cannot undo this action.
You can still choose the perfect emoji for your Venmo transaction. Just keep it between yourself and whoever you pay to.