Name: The big picture: Venmo's privacy policy exposes users' transactions
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The big picture: Venmo's privacy policy exposes users' transactions

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Illustration: Rebecca Zisser/AxiosA data expert sifted through 200 million Venmo transactions, from drug deals, to eating habits and arguments, to show the payment app lacks default privacy protections, t.Why it matters: Venmo is seen as an informal millennial app that connects friends with likes and emojis on payments. Regardless, Venmo still shows the financial spending habits of millions of users, the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s Christine Bannon tells Axios. The data was still available even after Venmo's creator PayPal with the Federal Trade Commission in February when Venmo misrepresented the extent of their privacy policy in users' bank account transfers.How it works: A Berlin-based researcher Hang Do Thi Duc, accessed the data through a public application programming interface, and was able to see the names of every user who hadn’t changed those default settings to private, along with the dates of every transaction and the message sent with the payment. She created a of her findings to raise awareness among people who think and regularly say "I have nothing to hide," she said. The default for transactions when a user signs up to the app is public, so anyone, even non-friends, on the internet can see. Private settings are available within the app, but it's not clearly highlighted during the sign-up process.By the numbers: Someone else , as a joke, that uses the data to tweet names and transactions related to possible drug deals on Venmo. Developers using the data highlights the misalignment between user expectations and what’s able to be done with that data. A Venmo spokeswoman told The Guardian the "safety and privacy" of its users is "one of our highest priorities.""Our users trust us with their money and personal information, and we take this responsibility and applicable privacy laws very seriously. Like on other social networks, Venmo users can choose what they want to share on the Venmo public feed."The bottom line: Lack of transparency in privacy policies is not uncommon in apps, marketing or social media sites. Different apps have different policies that allow them know various pieces of users' lives. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said in a statement Saturday he will be blind for roughly a month after getting surgery to reattach the retina in left eye.Why it matters: Crenshaw, who lost his right eye and sustained severe damage to his left eye during his third deployment to Afghanistan in 2012, said he will be "pretty much off the grid for the next few weeks."NASA is set to fly the first test flight of its tiny Ingenuity helicopter on Mars Sunday, marking the advent of drones for space exploration.Why it matters: If successful, this flight will be the first time a human-built aircraft has flown on a world other than Earth, opening the door to new means of exploring planets far from our own.A new 20-year-forecast for the world: increasingly fragmented and turbulent.The big picture: A major report put out this week by the reflects a present rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic. How the next two decades will unfold depends largely on whether new technologies will ultimately unite us — or continue to divide us.

Illustration: Rebecca Zisser/AxiosA data expert sifted through 200 million Venmo transactions, from drug deals, to eating habits and arguments, to show the payment app lacks default privacy protections, t.Why it matters: Venmo is seen as an informal millennial app that connects friends with likes and emojis on payments. Regardless, Venmo still shows the financial spending habits of millions of users, the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s Christine Bannon tells Axios. The data was still available even after Venmo's creator PayPal with the Federal Trade Commission in February when Venmo...

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Marisa is a general newsdesk and breaking news reporter at Axios. She covers topics related to public health.

https://www.axios.com/authors/MFernandez/

Marisa Fernandez

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The big picture: Venmo's privacy policy exposes users' transactions

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