I’m spending most of my time at my fiancées house since my hip replacement in May, and she occasionally asks me to assist her with Venmo transactions between her and her sister. Today I was doing so and learned, to my horror, that the app shows her other people’s transactions! I quickly ensured that her own transactions are private, and went looking for a justification for this practice. I.found an online article from three years ago, in which a PayPal executive claimed that “Public” is the default setting, because the social nature of the app makes it “fun.”
This is bullshit, of course, but what really want to know is if there’s any way to keep other people’s transactions the fuck off my fiancee’s Venmo page.
Not quite the answer you want, but have them switch to Zelle. It integrates into most banks’ (or credit unions’) websites or apps and doesn’t have the issues of default un-privacy like Venmo.
Or, if they bank with the same bank, they can set it up where each can deposit to the other’s account (without being able to see the contents of the other account). I do that with my daughters.
She has Zelle, and prefers it. OTOH, her sister, while she HAS Zelle, and can send money out through it, won’t register it so my fiancée can send her money.
I don’t really understand it, but it has to do with the fact that they’re with different banks.
So Venmo is a thing for the foreseeable future, and I want it to stop spamming us with unwanted information.
This just doesn’t make any sense, if you know how Zelle works, but okay. (I suspect the sister is not understanding the process.) Can’t help you on your Venmo question, but someone else may be able to.
Stranger
It seems super weird to me as well.
A few years ago, someone I went to college with was working for Blippy, a now-failed startup that was a commercial social network that basically mined people’s credit card statements and shared what they bought.
I was honestly aghast that this was a service that anyone wanted, and I am glad that it turned out that no one actually did.