From there, you can choose to share your transactions with the public, only friends or just the person with whom you're exchanging money. Related: California passes strictest online privacy law in the countryĪn immediate solution is to change your default options. "You're basically having people testify against themselves in transaction comments about illicit activity," said Mike Chapple, who teaches business analytics and cybersecurity courses at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business. Although it's unlikely the police would act solely on Venmo data, it could be an important source of information. Law enforcement could also use payment information to investigate illegal activity like drug dealing. ![]() "It could be incredibly valuable to have a sense of how people exchange resources like money, and what kind of purchase behaviors they engage in." "The way people behave online is extremely valuable to companies," said Tami Kim, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. And that info also could be used to target ads or track consumers. Such information can reveal when and where people are spending money - and with whom. While some people may not care that their transactions are public, a timeline of user behavior and payments could leave their data exposed to marketers and advertisers. She also learned a lot about people's eating habits, like the woman with several friends in Mexico City who racked up 2,033 transactions for sodas, pizza, coffee, booze, and donuts in eight months.īut Do Thi Duc's work suggests that Venmo's default setting leaves users vulnerable to potentially embarrassing revelations or even dangerous situations like stalking. Of greater interest, or concern, might be that Do Thi Duc read several intimate conversations between users in the comments section, and identified more than 1 million unique last names. Nearly 3 million transactions involved pizza (or the pizza emoji), and the first weekend in December was the platform's busiest period last year. The research turned up some interesting details about the payments platform. Related: Having more control over your data doesn't mean it's safe Like on other social networks, Venmo users can choose what they want to share on the Venmo public feed," the spokesperson said. "Our users trust us with their money and personal information, and we take this responsibility and applicable privacy laws very seriously. Venmo declined to say why it makes full public disclosure the default setting, but a company spokesperson told CNNMoney that "the safety and privacy of Venmo users and their information is one of our highest priorities." So she set out to determine just how easily accessible all that information is, and what she might learn from it. At first, she had no idea all of her transactions were public, and figured she probably wasn't alone in that. She began using Venmo frequently as a student in New York City. But users who think only friends can see their transactions are mistaken, said Do Thi Duc. Venmo doesn't disclose its total number of users, but Verto Analytics estimates that the platform, owned by PayPal ( PYPL), has 10 million monthly active users. Uber also added it as a payment option last week. The app, which launched in 2009, is especially popular with millennials, who use it to pay rent, split dinner, or chip in for groceries. Venmo is a handy app that makes it easy to make payments and request money electronically. "Whether you're sharing this data consciously or unconsciously, you should think about who can access it and what things they could do. "There are some people who are intentionally public, but there are a lot of people who are not aware of this public by default setting," Do Thi Duc said. (She can't, however, say how things turned out, because the couple eventually took their conversation elsewhere.) ![]() She's on to the guy in Santa Barbara, California, who makes a living selling marijuana treats with names like "Gorilla cookies." And she's watched a romantic relationship develop between two Texans who flirted in the comments section of a payment. She has, for example, followed the lives of a Southern California couple paying off a loan while regularly ordering pizza and taking their dog to the vet.
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