Please explain the chaos of leaving your Venmo activity public

Anonymous
Do you not know you can make it private? Do you know but don't care? Do you like having other people see the activity?

I just don't understand.
Anonymous
We had to take my FIL's phone and delete several apps and disable 98% of notifications. Some people just think you use the phone and apps the way they come. Their phones are dinging loudly every time the Gap advertises a sale. It is an insane way to live.
Anonymous
The real question is why the app makes public an option, plus the default option.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:The real question is why the app makes public an option, plus the default option.


Enshittification.

Somebody found Joe Biden's Venmo a few years back.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/we-found-joe-bidens-secret-venmo
Anonymous
It’s bizarre.
Anonymous
I know it’s public. I don’t care. If someone is bored enough to search through my Venmo activity have at it. There is nothing exciting in there.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:Do you not know you can make it private? Do you know but don't care? Do you like having other people see the activity?

I just don't understand.


+1
Anonymous
I like to put fake descriptions to keep people talking about me.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:We had to take my FIL's phone and delete several apps and disable 98% of notifications. Some people just think you use the phone and apps the way they come. Their phones are dinging loudly every time the Gap advertises a sale. It is an insane way to live.


OP here and that I would understand. But all the people I see public on Venmo are younger (under age 50) and tech savvy. Some I know have private/locked down Instagram and Facebook accounts, so they are clearly aware of privacy concerns online.

Also, I don't use Venmo often. Like 6x a year when I sell something on a list serve or a friend buys tickets to a concert. But the people I see who are public appear to use the app often because it's always the same names over and over. It seems bizarre to me that you would be regularly using Venmo to reimburse friends and coworkers for things but be unaware that the activity is being publicly broadcast on the app to the point that many of your regular social habits, the people you interact with frequently, what home services you employ, the fact that you have kids, etc., are all laid out online.

Given the scammers out there who will scrape the internet for personal info they can use to try and scam people out of their money, this seems totally insane to me. A scammer could see that you have coffee with a specific person every Tuesday (and see the first and last name of that person), and could impersonate them to try and bait you into something. I've gotten scam attempts in my work email where people have posed as colleagues whose names they clearly obtained from our company website, for instance. Imagine getting a text and the name on the screen is someone you know referencing something real (like a recent coffee meet up) -- you would probably trust it implicitly without checking the number.

It seems so dangerous.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:The real question is why the app makes public an option, plus the default option.


To normalize no privacy and digital ID tracking your every move.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:I know it’s public. I don’t care. If someone is bored enough to search through my Venmo activity have at it. There is nothing exciting in there.


It's not that it's exciting. It's that it's a lot of info about what you do, where you go, how you spend money, and who you associate with, just laid out for anyone to look at.
Anonymous
Mine is private but for the people I know who have public activity, it's all like "$20 for pizza" or "$30 for bus driver gift." It's unclear to me what kind of chaos that could possibly cause.
Anonymous
You have to do extra effort to make it private, so many people, either don't know or don't bother. You're assuming a degree of competence and energy from the average American that is not there.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:I like to put fake descriptions to keep people talking about me.

Child support, 420, wake and bake, hide the body, hush money, bat mitzvah, restroom toll, gene editing
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The real question is why the app makes public an option, plus the default option.


Enshittification.

Somebody found Joe Biden's Venmo a few years back.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/we-found-joe-bidens-secret-venmo



What is the gist of what they found?
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