Word has it that some of us like to share our financial transactions with our friends…or in some cases the entire world. A researcher in Berlin found that nearly 210 million Venmo transactions were available for download to anyone who could find them. The researcher claimed to download 57,600 transactions per day, even after Venmo (owned by PayPal) made changes that was supposed to, at a minimum, slow the download speed of the transactions. Well, that makes it all OK, doesn’t it?
It’s all well and good that Venmo is at least doing something to make some of us feel better. Unfortunately, it isn’t enough if you want to keep your transactions limited to whomever you give permission to see them.
Fortunately, there is something you can do for now to limit your exposure. All you have to do is go into the app and change your privacy settings to Private (Settings > Privacy). Do this for past transactions too. These can be found by going to Settings > Privacy > Past Transactions. There is an option to change all transactions to private.
Many users may not realize that by sharing transactions, they are leaving themselves vulnerable to data theft, which could potentially lead to financial fraud or something else. For example, they may not be able to see your account numbers, but they can see with whom you exchange transactions. Those names can be impersonated in email messages that you are more likely to open or click on an attachment that is loaded with malware that could steal account information.
PayPal spokespersons have claimed that some people like to make their financial transactions public as part of the social media movement. However, keep in mind that if you are one of those people, your information may be up for grabs.