OMG, and I thought Facebook was creepy!

[dreamshark]

 I just discovered Venmo. I was trying to find a way to send a little money to Amber and Olin, and even though they don't like to think of themselves as Millennials, they suggested Venmo (a peer-to-peer money transfer app).

So I signed up for Venmo, linking it to my backup checking account that usually doesn't have much money in it. The interface is clean and easy to use, I'll give it that. And you don't have to look very hard to discover that the default settings are 

• Can share transactions involving me:  Everyone
• Default audiences for future transactions:  Public

It just isn't obvious what that means. It turns out that if you leave these settings at their default (which apparently most people do) anybody that has you in their phone contacts list can see every transaction that you have ever made using Venmo. And a list of all your Venmo friends. And if they click on one of those friends, they can see all of THEIR transactions and so on through the entire universe of Venmo users. This thing must be a private detective's wet dream. 

Needless to say, I changed my settings to PRIVATE.

Comments

[quadong]

Neat.

I think we've almost solved the apparently-very-hard problem of one person being able to give another person a file (xkcd949). Maybe next someone can solve the apparently-very-hard problem of one person being able to give another person money (without creepiness, I mean).

[dreamshark]

It doesn't HAVE to be all post-privacy creepy. That's one of the things I like about Paypal - you can not only transfer money privately, you can do things like contribute to a charity without the beneficiary learning any of your contact info. But A&O prefer Venmo, for some reason.