{"id":62475,"date":"2018-08-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-27T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/foxtail\/2018\/08\/27\/dear-venmo-update-your-privacy-settings\/"},"modified":"2021-02-09T05:36:29","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T05:36:29","slug":"dear-venmo-update-your-privacy-settings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/en\/mozilla\/dear-venmo-update-your-privacy-settings\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Venmo: Update Your Privacy Settings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, privacy researcher and Mozilla Fellow Hang Do Thi Duc released Public By Default<\/a>, a sobering look at the vast amount of personal data that\u2019s easily accessible on Venmo, the mobile payment app.<\/p>\n

By using Venmo\u2019s public API and its \u201cpublic by default\u201d setting for user transactions, Hang was able to watch a couple feud on Valentine\u2019s Day, observe a woman\u2019s junk food habits, and peer into a marijuana dealer\u2019s business operations. Seven million people use Venmo every month<\/a> \u2014 and many may not know that their transactions are available for anyone to see.<\/p>\n

Privacy, and not publicity, should be the default.<\/p>\n

Despite widespread coverage<\/a> of Hang\u2019s work \u2014 and a petition by Mozilla<\/a> that has garnered more than 17,000 signatures \u2014 Venmo transactions are still public by default.<\/p>\n

But on August 23, Bloomberg reported<\/a> that \u201cIn recent weeks, executives at PayPal Holdings Inc., the parent company of Venmo, were weighing whether to remove the option to post and view public transactions, said a person familiar with the deliberations. It\u2019s unclear if those discussions are still ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, we\u2019re urging Venmo: See these important discussions through. Put users\u2019 privacy first by making transactions <\/b>private<\/i><\/b> by default.<\/b><\/p>\n

\n

Ashley Boyd<\/a> is Mozilla’s VP of Advocacy.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month, privacy researcher and Mozilla Fellow Hang Do Thi Duc released Public By Default, a sobering look at the vast amount of personal data that\u2019s easily accessible on Venmo, the mobile payment app. By using Venmo\u2019s public API and its \u201cpublic by default\u201d setting for user transactions, Hang was able to watch a couple […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1532,"featured_media":11662,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDear Venmo: Update Your Privacy Settings<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/en\/mozilla\/dear-venmo-update-your-privacy-settings\/\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" 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