Dear Venmo: Update Your Privacy Settings | Hacker News Reader

Dear Venmo: Update Your Privacy Settings

blog.mozilla.org

78 pointsOurs9059 comments

I have never posted publicly to Venmo and I don’t understand why this would be a feature anyone, anywhere actually wants. Who I give how much money to for what reason isn’t anyone’s business but mine and the IRS’s. Maybe I’m not in tune with the kids these days but the public stream seems to exist only for people to mistakenly post to without realizing everyone can see their transactions.

It was designed for Venmo to prove to new users that the app has a large network and was trustworthy

> Yeah, absolutely, so one of the biggest purposes of the social feed when Venmo first launched was around this concept of social proof. So if you think about a product like Venmo, it’s really only useful to you if people that you want to transact with are also using Venmo. So when Venmo launched, we had two feeds, we had the public feed and the friend feed. And immediately when a new user signed up for Venmo, you could see in the public feed that Venmo was something other people were using.

From a Venmo product lead - https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/14/16643192/venmo-stalking-...

Good find, thanks for sharing that. So it's classic case of the business deciding they had a use case that took precedence over their users' interests.

I feel pretty confident that they could have come up with a better solution if they had considered the privacy aspect at all. One really simple, basic step might be not exposing the exact datetime when the transaction was made. Not linking both parties to the transaction in one display would be another choice that would still serve the purpose of demonstrating volume.

I doubt anyone wants their transactions to be public, even younger people (many of which are knowledgeable about privacy nowadays). I think this is more of an oversight by Venmo and this post is telling them to pick up their act and change the default visibility to private.

even younger people (many of which are knowledgeable about privacy nowadays)

How young are you talking? My peers in their 20s have the same attitude towards Internet privacy as towards factory farming and abusive labor practices at clothing manufacturers: " I know I should care, but it doesn't affect me right now so I will worry about caring later"

I use Venmo weekly and my group of friends love that feature. It's a sort of "social network" feature.

It might not be for everyone, but there's plenty of people that are aware of the feature and aren't bothered by it.

Earnest question: Why do you love it? What about seeing people transact money do you love?

Like I get that this is another place to use cheeky emojis (Steve bought some weed and gave his dealer a tree emoji! Classic Steve!) but just...why?

I don't love the feature, although I do sometimes look through my friends' transactions. I guess it's similar to sharing a photo on Facebook, or doing a "check in" when you're at a location: it's simply about broadcasting who you were with and what you guys were either doing or bought.

Most transactions between parties are simply "drinks", pizza emojis, or "rent" to a roommate. It's about showing who you are, what you do, and who you're with.

shrug IDK, it seems like I have tons of ways to do that already if I'm so inclined and have never wanted it as part of my financial transactions. I've never understood the appeal personally, but I also don't understand the appeal of high-heeled shoes or cliff diving.

Are you saying you like seeing just your friends’ payments (understandable) or everyone’s including strangers (the problem)?

I don't care either way about seeing payments; I'm just saying that plenty of young people (including my group of friends) don't see this is some massive privacy violation. Instead, it's a cool social feature.

I was trying to understand if your friends like to see just each others' payment or everyone in the world's payments? Venmo has 3 settings: Anyone, Friends Only, Private.

Except that it is quite possibly _the_ feature that made Venmo successful where others failed. It provided invaluable cues on what to use it for and that “everyone” was using it.

It's possible. I used venmo because it had a super-duper-simple sign-up, worked with credit cards, had low fees, and my friends were already asking for money that way. All I care about is my own transactions.

I go to instagram to see nice pictures sometimes and contact friends and family. I never, ever go to venmo to see how people are spending money.

You have to think a little more deeply at how some apps break through while the vast majority fail. I can't prove my assertion except to point out the info sharing was a key difference between Venmo and all the rest and I can see how it would contribute to Venmo's success.

Idea Man: Hey boss, I have an idea for a new personal payment app.

Boss: So what, those are a dime a dozen.

Idea Man: Yea boss, but this one has THE SOCIAL!

Boss: OOOH, we need THE SOCIAL!

---

How I imagine the pitch for Venmo went.

It's funny because the real draw to Venmo is that it's the easiest payment app to use, transfers to your banker quick and painless, and you only need a phone number to sign up. It's just that people didn't even realize this was a problem they need to solve in an age of PayPal and credit cards.

It is a problem that has yet to be solved. Venmo only solved it within the United States, as it is only available there.

Venmo _is_ paypal. They are the same company. That's what makes this so confusing.

They weren't always Paypal though, right?

You are right. They were first acquired by Braintree which later was acquired by Paypal.

Paypal bought Venmo after Venmo highlighted how far behind it was in usability and popularity in the younger generations.

It also helped that they charged 0% fees when they were getting started, even though they had to pay costs themselves.

Zelle is easier/more secure to use. You can use your regular bank app, it's much faster than Venmo, and doesn't involve giving a third party access to your bank account. And your money isn't held by the third party until you withdraw it.

Edit: I can't even figure out how to do 2FA with venmo.

Edit again: Apparently it's enabled for all accounts via SMS to the phone number, so that's better than nothing, but TOTP would be better.

Zelle requires you to know the right email address for the person you're sending money to. Venmo allows search by phone number, name, handle. It's far easier for quick transactions with people you only know a bit. I love Zelle, but Venmo solves a problem better than it.

Zelle also allows search by number in all major bank participant integrations.

Zelle is also sponsored by the largest banks in the US, putting Venmo at a significant disadvantage. They're already exceeding Venmo's payment volume [1].

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/23/mobile-payments-zelle-has-ri...

>"Zelle is easier/more secure to use."

Can you elaborate oh how Zelle is more secure? 2FA? Fraud protection?

I've never used the Zelle app itself (don't need to if your bank has integrated it), but the bank I use for sending and receiving small amounts of money (BoA) lets you setup 2FA via email only, which for me is effectively TOTP. Also, one less entity has my checking account # so one less entity that can initiate ACH transfers into/or out of your account. And of course, the money goes directly from me to the recipient and vice versa as opposed to someone else so that's always better.

Funny you mention transfers to the bank. I stopped using Venmo because it doesn’t even support joint checking accounts. If my wife and I both have Venmo, only one of us can transfer to the bank. So I have to transfer to her, then she transfers to the bank. So stupid! If they can’t even get this basic functionality working, my confidence of their service is pretty low.

People want to, and choose to, broadcast what they are doing and who they are doing it with. This shouldn't be news to people. Why do people have public Instagram and Twitter accounts? Some will see no appeal and are turned off by the thought of this, but for others it's their way of life. So instead of criticizing the app, maybe what you really want to do is criticize the people using the app? Lastly, clicking "private" on a post is dead simple; the company shouldn't be forced to change the default setting that differentiates them because somebody can't figure that out. Come on.

People make Instagram and Twitter accounts for the very purpose of sharing things socially. I don't know of anyone who uses Venmo specifically because they want to post their monetary transactions publicly. The fraction of my friends that still have their post visibility set to public either are unaware, or have a laissez-faire attitude about it. None of them "want to broadcast" their monetary transactions. We all use venmo because it has ubiquity in our friend groups/social networks.

Public By Default is an amazing investigation into one year of Venmo data available on the public API http://publicbydefault.fyi/

Relevant parody video - Venmo CEO: We’re Fun! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWFLztKBrLY

"What if you could comment on a work colleague's electricity bill?"

This was laugh out funny. Thank you for posting this. Cheers.

see also: http://www.vicemo.com/

This kind of useless feature set is why Cash App is starting to eclipse Venmo in usage. [0]

It's why I originally started using CA... simple interface, no useless social feature. Just send money, boom.

Now they've added Bitcoin purchases (the easiest and quickest way to buy and send to hardware wallet) and Boosts which (inexplicably) give you huge discounts like $1 off every coffee you purchase at a coffee shop. [1]

No brainer to use CA over alternatives.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/16/nomura-instinet-square-cash-...

[1] https://www.cultofmac.com/532069/square-cash-coffee-reward-p...

I have not used Venmo. Can someone explain the user experience around this? Does it happen just by doing a transaction or is it like posting something on social media with an audience dropdown box or something?

It happens just by doing a transaction unless you set the transaction to friends only or private. (I do think that the setting "sticks" for later transactions, but am not 100% sure.)

There's an activity feed, just like Facebook. Whenever you pay someone on Venmo the app will make a public post on your behalf, and any of your friends can see all of your purchases on the feed ("Bottomless mimosas", "Sushi with Jessica", etc).

Also important to note that your transactions are "public" by default, which means everyone can see them, not just friends that you've added.

Do users really fill comment field? Why? Does it have embedded accounting module or people knowingly collect and share their payments? If it is accounting, then why free text and not categories?

I use local similar app and all transactions go with no comment, from everyone, since there is no point to make such comments (and they’re private).

Publicly show the data on the CTO's, CFO's, board members' etc use of Venmo. That should prompt some haste.

cue the addition of opt-out settings, and Venmo representatives immediately opting out of the public feed.

You can opt out, the first thing I did when I installed the app was notice that people's transactions were public and hunt down the setting that made mine private.

Venmo always had opt out settings and the management of Venmo and paypal proudly share a lot of their payments

Mozilla should make all of their Firefox telemetry, Pocket ads and sponsored content, sponsored Mr. Robot addons that automatically install, Cliqz spyware, etc. opt-in before they talk about the defaults of other companies. Mozilla have no shame.

You're succumbing to the allure of what-aboutism here. Yes, granted, Mozilla aren't perfect and have made some significant missteps (not all of which they've suitably amended), and deserve criticism for them. But just because they're vulnerable to criticism doesn't invalidate what they're saying here, and doesn't make another entity who regularly handles more sensitive data in less private ways less vulnerable to criticism.

Should this message be coming from another source? Yes, but 'as well as', not 'instead of'. Is it good for user advocacy that a highly recognised source is promoting this message, even if the source is flawed? Yes, it is.

You missed my point. To me, Mozilla is not a highly recognised source. They are politically aligned, they don't respect the privacy of their users, and what's even worse: they say they do and herald themselves as the saviours of the free web and privacy and blah blah, while they stab their users in the back. Mozilla is not only a "flawed source": they either don't know what privacy is, or they are simply malicious. They have no authority to tell me how to defend my privacy or to tell other corporations how to act.

No, they didn't miss your point. You missed their point. You're not criticizing the message, you're criticizing the messenger. Maybe Mozilla shouldn't be the one saying this. But are they wrong about Venmo?

Yes, I'm criticising the messenger. I didn't imply I was criticising the message in any of my posts. I personally don't care because I don't use Venmo. I just thought it was hilarious, if not infuriating, for Mozilla to say anything about user privacy.

By quoting a few high-profile stories and ignoring everything else Mozilla does for privacy. That really is infuriating.

What exactly has Mozilla done for my privacy? The effects of Mozilla on my privacy have only been detrimental, given that I use Firefox and they have screwed me over a few times already.

> I personally don't care because I don't use Venmo

By that logic, you shouldn't care about Mozilla because you can just download another browser.

But that's not true. Venmo and Firefox have an impact on the larger world, whether you use them or not. Both should be criticized. But criticizing the messenger does not excuse the behavior of the other.

A couple of decades ago I could not even imagine that in around 2020 people will create a petition for a default setting. Still looking for a better name for this phenomena, since what I have in mind seems too offensive.

Libertarian paternalism

What is the business case for their making transactions public? Venmo can still mine and sell user data without it being public. I believe they can also use the FB social graph api without transactions being public as well. Am I missing something obvious?

Yes

The only public thing in venmo is the note you attach. You choose whether to publish it. It can contain anything you want. It doesnt have a dollar amount attached.

A significant chunk of the population finds this fun.

I see so it provides "engagement value."

But if I send you money we could both read that attached message without the entire internet having access to it. Or do I have this wrong and the the fun is really in reading strangers transaction messages? If the majority of people are unaware that these messages are public wouldn't this mean that the "significant chunk" are a minority of Venmo's total users?

Next to every transaction is a drop down menu. That menu allows you to select "Private." This doesn't seem like something Mozilla needs to involve themselves in, especially with all the privacy snafus of their own.

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