After BuzzFeed Found President Biden's Account, Venmo Lets Users Make Friend Lists Private
upstart writes:
After We Found Biden's Account, Venmo Will Let You Make Your Friend List Private:
Venmo was the only major social network that had a contact-based friend list that could not be made private. Because people use Venmo to get paid, they often use a variation of their real name and real photos of themselves. The app encourages people to import their phone's contact list or Facebook friend list, creating networks where people can friend hundreds of other people on Venmo to allow them to pay others more easily.
To remove someone as a friend, a user has to unfriend the person manually.
"It's past time for Venmo to take this step, and it's definitely a step in the right direction," Gennie Gebhart, the acting activism director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told BuzzFeed News. "What we'd really like to see Venmo do next is make privacy the default for friend lists and transactions, not just a settings option."
Another privacy issue with Venmo is how it handles people's photos. BuzzFeed News reported that Venmo stores all old profile photos on its servers, with no way for people to remove them. These old photos are also easily discoverable by lightly editing the image URL on the web version.
In 2018, PayPal settled charges from the FTC over its privacy settings and made it easier for people to find the privacy settings for transactions. However, even after the FTC suit, the default for new users was to have all transactions public.
It's unclear whether friend lists will still be public by default for new users.
"We applaud Venmo for taking a step in the right direction," Kaili Lambe, a senior campaigner with Mozilla, told BuzzFeed News. "However, consumers shouldn't have to dig around in product settings to find basic privacy protections. Consumers expect privacy to be the default and so do we."
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