JD Vance, the Ohio senator who has been tapped as Donald Trump’s running mate, is 39 years old — a true millennial. As a millennial, he uses Venmo, the social payments app. He also, apparently, isn’t very up-to-date on the latest privacy features in the app.
Wired discovered Vance’s Venmo account and saw a few of his transactions and a list of his Venmo contacts. (Being friends on Venmo doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve transacted with the people — it just means you or they synced phone contacts at some point.)
Vance’s office didn’t comment on the record to Wired.
Venmo has been criticized for how it handles user privacy for years. Although it’s possible to make individual transactions private, for a long time that wasn’t the default. After the Federal Trade Commission got involved, Venmo had to find a way to make all your past public transactions private.
But for a long time, there was no way to make your friend list private. (There still is no such thing as making your entire account “private.”) This was a serious concern for, say, a therapist who accepted Venmo as payment — their friend list potentially exposes their client list.
In 2021, my colleague at the time at BuzzFeed News found Joe Biden’s personal Venmo by combing through public friend lists. Shortly after that, Venmo, which is owned by PayPal, a company co-founded by Vance’s booster Peter Thiel, FINALLY added a feature to make your contacts private.
In a statement to Wired, Venmo said: “Venmo takes our customers’ privacy very seriously, which is why we let customers choose their privacy settings — and we make it incredibly simple for customers to make their account private if they choose to do so.”
But sadly, most people don’t know about these privacy features! So I’m shouting about them as many times — over and over — as I possibly can!
With that in mind, here’s how to make your Venmo account as private as possible:
1. Start at the “Settings” gear at the top of your Venmo profile page
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2. Now, once you get to the Settings page, scroll down to “Privacy”
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3. If you haven’t already — set your default for transactions to Private. But keep in mind: This is only for individual transactions; it doesn’t mean your account is fully private.
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4. While you’re on this page, also scroll down to the “Friends List” option
5. Now, change this to Private. Also, move the toggle so that you won’t appear in other people’s friend lists
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