mastodon.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
The original server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit

Administered by:

Server stats:

366K
active users

GeekMomProjects

A friend was trying to track down a stranger she briefly interacted with. She decided to look for the stranger on Venmo to see if their transactions were public. Not only were those transactions public, but my friend was able to deduce that the stranger has been attending, and has been treasurer for Narcotics Anonymous meetings for a period of time and even the meeting location based on notes in the transaction listings. It's crazy that this information can be so easy to find!

@geekmomprojects Venmo data is public by default and most people don't know...

@grumpasaurus I knew that they were, but thought Venmo had changed the default. I guess not. It's absolutely ridiculous to make financial transactions like this public.

@geekmomprojects Ugh, I just finally put venmo on my phone a month ago. Time to delete it

@MLE_online just make sure you set your transactions to private. They are public by default. If you set them to private, they should be ok.

@geekmomprojects Yeah, but having the transactions be public by default makes me question the ethics of the company

@MLE_online yes, absolutely. But given that pretty much every company you interact with sells your data, I don't think they're particularly worse than any other company. They just have more sensitive data and no standards for their users' privacy.

@MLE_online @geekmomprojects Maybe you should read the "Criticism and Controversies" part at Wikipedia and then reconsider the usage. 😃 It seems they have a real problem with 'privacy'. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venmo

en.m.wikipedia.orgVenmo - Wikipedia

@geekmomprojects @MLE_online and are those transactions then made private on the other’s side as well?

@h5e @MLE_online I believe so. Otherwise they'd still be searchable. I'm pretty sure they're not searchable if you set your transactions to private.

@geekmomprojects That is awful. This information should never be made publicly available.

@geekmomprojects I know therapists who won't accept Venmo because it's a giant HIPPA compliance issue

@xorn yeah, I can see why! I'm trying to figure out how to discreetly reach out to the chapter of NA to let them know their information is public without reaching out to one of the names in Venmo, because that feels like I'd be personally breaching their anonymity.

@geekmomprojects The "public by default" setting for Venmo is puzzling in terms of privacy & security rights. I guess the banks & credit card companies are ok with it?