{"id":3215,"date":"2018-10-29T10:35:46","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T03:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.adeptasiaconsulting.com\/?p=3215"},"modified":"2018-10-15T22:14:26","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T15:14:26","slug":"mozilla-pushes-paypal-to-make-venmo-transactions-private-by-default","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.adeptasiaconsulting.com\/mozilla-pushes-paypal-to-make-venmo-transactions-private-by-default\/","title":{"rendered":"Mozilla pushes PayPal to make Venmo transactions private by default"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Earlier this year, the FTC settled with PayPal<\/a> over the company\u2019s handling of privacy disclosures in its peer-to-peer payments app Venmo, but Mozilla doesn\u2019t think the changes Venmo <\/a> made as a result<\/a> went far enough. This week, Mozilla says it delivered a petition signed by 25,000 Americans asking Venmo to set transactions shared in its app to private by default, instead of public.<\/p>\n

As Mozilla <\/a> explains<\/a>, \u201cmillions of Venmo users\u2019 spending habits are available for anyone to see.\u00a0That\u2019s because Venmo transactions are currently public by default \u2014 unless users manually update their settings, anyone, anywhere can see whom they\u2019re sending money to, and why.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many Venmo users likely feel that it\u2019s not very dangerous to share through Venmo\u2019s feed \u2013 a key feature of its popular payments app \u2013 that they paid back a friend for part of the dinner, drinks or some concert tickets, for example.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0a Berlin-based researcher, Hang Do Thi Duc, recently studied the risks associated with this sort of over-sharing.<\/p>\n

Do Thi Duc analyzed more than 200 million public Venmo transactions made in 2017 by accessing the data through a public API. This allowed her to see the names, dates and transactions of Venmo users. She found that a lot could actually be gleaned from this data,<\/a> including users\u2019 drug habits in some cases, as well as their relationships, junk food habits, location, daily routines, personal finances, rent payments and more.<\/p>\n

In other words, while the individual transaction itself may seem harmless, in aggregate these transactions can be very revealing about the person in question.<\/p>\n