In the midst of the Republican National Convention, vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance is making headlines not just for his policy proposals and soundbites, but also for leaving his Venmo feed public, showing his connections to tech executives, fellow Ivy League-educated lawyers, and the institution behind the controversial Project 2025.
The Ohio Republican’s public Venmo feed—the app, like its competitor Zelle, is a popular tool for peer-to-peer payments—shows there is a disconnect between Vance’s anti-elite rhetoric and his actual network, according to Wired, which first reported the story. Politics aside, it’s a good reminder to double check your privacy settings on the apps you use; otherwise, your financial life could also be laid bare to friends, family members, or even scammers.
As Wired‘s story explains, when users create a Venmo account, they are asked if the app is allowed to access their phone contacts; Venmo will then sync the user’s “friend” list with the people in their phonebook. Users can also add or remove friends on their own. This feed is public by default, as is each user’s transaction history. Everyone must go into their settings and opt into a private feed if they don’t want their information to be public.
A Venmo spokesperson told Wired that the company “takes our customers’ privacy very seriously,” and privacy experts have long warned users to use their privacy settings. Still, Vance is far from the only politician to have his account exposed. BuzzFeed News discovered transactions by President Joe Biden and some of his family members on the app in 2021, which led the company to allow users to make their friends list private in the first place.
While payments have historically been a private matter, Venmo turned financial transactions into a social network—look on apps like TikTok and Reddit, and you’ll see users say Venmo is their favorite social media because of what it can reveal about users. The app’s public stream can often give clues about who is dating who and what friends are hanging out together.
“Access to anyone’s social connections can reveal sensitive private information and expose them to security risks,” Jennifer Lynch, general counsel at civil liberties nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Wired. For a politician or executive, it can reveal even more sensitive information.
While the average user may not be connected to world leaders and high-level decision-makers, they still should make their accounts private, experts say. To do so, they can open the app, go to Settings, Privacy, and then make “Private” the default for Transactions and Friends List. Also under Friends List, don’t forget to toggle off the option to appear in other users’ lists (shown above).
Additional privacy plays include not sharing your contacts list with the app, as well as not sharing your location.
