Caution Venmo

There is an interesting article in today's NYT detailing how using Venmo for payment can unbeknownst to the payer share more information that was planned.

"Venmo is still set by default to publicly share when you receive or make a payment. There’s an option to make the transaction private, but if you use the app quickly and don’t notice the setting, you could unknowingly broadcast the payments between you and others."

While you might not care of a bunch of people can see your transactions, it seems to me that it could be a fertile collection ground for scammers particularly if they know each other, as they can see who might respond to similar fake offers if one was successful.

You can set the privacy choices on Venmo but if you don't know to do that, you may be sharing more information than you think. This of course goes far beyond reptile purchases, you can see who people interact with in all sorts of situations.

Anyway, I am definitely not tech savvy, but thought this was interesting and worthy of a share. (I don't use Venmo).

If you have a NYT account here is the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/09/t...sultPosition=1

Thank you for sharing.