How to check and set Venmo Privacy Settings

In 2015, I noticed the Venmo financial activity of a friend posting on Facebook but he had no idea this was happening. After 10 minutes of searching in 2021, reporters located President Biden’s Venmo account. They observed that President Biden had sent money to his grandchildren. They were able to map out a social web of Bidens’ contacts on Venmo that included the first family, the President’s children, his grandchildren and also senior White House officials. It’s clear that Venmo continues to pose a privacy risk to unsuspecting users who don’t understand Venmo’s default privacy settings.

This article will show you how to access Venmo privacy settings to make informed decisions about how you use the app.

Venmo Friend List and Transaction Visibility:

All new Venmo accounts are set to Public by default. I highly recommend changing your setting to Private.

1. Public payments are likable, can be commented on and are visible to everyone online.
2. Friends’ payments are visible, likable, and can be commented on by the sender, recipient, and everyone on each of their friends lists.
3. Private payments are visible to the sender and recipient only. No one else can see, like, or comment on them.

All Venmo transaction amounts are private, regardless of privacy settings. If your privacy settings are different from the other party (or parties) in a transaction, Venmo will use the most private setting.

Venmo’s default allows everyone to see who is on your Friends list, as well as all the Friends lists you’re on. Fortunately, you can change that and you can also manually remove friends from your list. 

How to change your privacy settings and remove past payment history:

• Go to Settings then Privacy. 
• You can change the privacy setting for all old payments at once or you can go to each payment to make individual changes.

Select the audience who can view your Venmo transactions

How to limit Venmo from accessing and sharing your Contact List and your Friend List:

Venmo allows you to automatically add your Facebook friends and phone contacts so you can “easily find, pay, and share payments with each other.” Perhaps it’s not a big deal if others see the payment you made to a friend after sharing a restaurant meal. But, would you care if others could see your Venmo payment for something private? Would you want others to know about your payment to an escort service, a Psychiatrist session or a doctor’s appointment?  Fortunately, you can enhance your privacy and protect your friends when using Venmo. Here’s how:

• Go to Settings then Friends and Social.
• Click the Connect link to make the connection to Facebook or toggle the button to off if you want to stop the connection. 
• Check or uncheck the Phone Contacts Box to allow or prevent Venmo from accessing your contacts.
• Click Save after making your changes.

How to make your Friends List private 

Multiple articles published this year state that Venmo Friends Lists are always publicly available. After exploring options on a friend’s app who is an avid user of Venmo, I noticed it is now possible to restrict public access of Friend Lists. (Perhaps this is a privacy update since the highly publicized Biden debacle.) 

• Click on Privacy.
• Look down the list to More.
• Click on Friends List (see image 1 below) which will open up a menu where you can select the visibility of your Friends List. (see image 2 below)
• Per image 2, toggle the switch to off if you don’t want to appear in other users’ Friend Lists.

Image 1

Image 2

How to remove friends from your “Friend list.”

• Manually remove one friend at a time by clicking on each person’s profile and  “unfriending them” by unchecking the word “Friends.”

Notice the details revealed in the feed. The transaction amount is never shown but other details give a good idea of what the payment was for.

Until I set about researching Venmo for this article, I was not consciously aware that Venmo is set up to be a social media platform that encourages social expression and real-time interactions. In Venmo’s words, “Settling up feels like catching up when you pay with Venmo, where the fun of connecting with friends in person continues right into your Venmo feed.” This doesn’t work for me, but clearly it works for many others. If you use Venmo like a social media platform and you are comfortable sharing your transaction history with other uninvolved parties, it would be interesting and helpful for me to understand your rationale. If you are willing, please explain in a comment to this article or in a private message to me.

Until next time, … Stay Cyber Safe!