Venmo was reported to the Deceptive Design Tip Line over its default privacy settings. According to the report, the social payment platform makes all transactions public by default, so a person must remember to change the setting from public to private or risk social harm. The report notes that some people made public transactions with drug or alcohol terms in the payment descriptions, which could be humiliating or harmful to their reputation or an accidental breach of what was meant to be private, and argues the onus is on the company to make transactions private by default. The report adds that the example was published in BuzzFeed News, and references privacy researcher Hang Do Thi Duc’s “Public by Default” project as an influence.
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Venmo: Public transactions by default
“A social payment platform makes all transactions public by default, which means that a person must remember to change the setting from public to private, or risk social harm. For example, reports highlight that some people made public transactions that used drug or alcohol terms in the payment descriptions — this could be humiliating or harmful to their reputation or be an accidental breach of what was meant to be private information. The onus is on the company to make the transactions private by default. The screenshot was originally posted by a Twitter account (since devactivated by its creator) and published in BuzzFeedNews in an article published in July 2018. This work was also influenced by privacy researcher Hang Do Thi Duc, who made a project called Public by Default .”