Venmo will now let users control the visibility of their friends list, following a report in which Biden's Venmo account and connections were easily found
BuzzFeed News
Context & Ripple Effects
Venmo's friends list has been an exposed surface for years: back in 2018 the company defended making transaction history public by default as something users enjoy sharing, with going private framed as an option rather than the baseline (public-by-default stance). In mid-May 2021, BuzzFeed News showed how little that had changed for social graph data — [[a:966342|reporters found President Biden's account and mapped his network of connections within minutes]].
The new setting is the first structural response: instead of arguing that privacy is clearly marked in the app, Venmo is giving users direct control over whether their friends list is visible at all. That matters because the same discovery mechanics that exposed a president work identically against any ordinary user whose contacts become a targeting map.
First-order effects
Users gain a toggle over friends-list visibility immediately, closing the specific vector BuzzFeed News demonstrated when it surfaced Biden's account through his connections.
Venmo absorbs the reputational cost of the report directly, having to ship a privacy fix for a feature it previously defended as core to the product.
Second-order effects
Peer payment apps face the same question about their social graphs — once one player treats contact visibility as a risk rather than a feature, 'everyone can see who you pay' becomes harder to defend as a design choice.
Opt-in controls rarely move existing users en masse, so expect pressure to shift from optional toggles toward changed defaults — the direction Venmo itself later took by setting new users' posts to friends-only during onboarding (the friends-only default).
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, social features attached to financial products get re-architected around consent and minimal exposure rather than virality, with regulators watching how platforms treat personal connection data after high-profile exposures like this one.
The deeper shift is that a single demonstrable security failure involving a head of state can force a consumer platform to unwind a years-old default-setting decision — a template other apps with public social graphs will be measured against.
The trend: Payment and social apps are moving from public-by-default social graphs toward private defaults and explicit consent, driven by high-profile privacy failures rather than regulator mandates.
Venmo is working on friends list privacy settings after Joe Biden's Venmo friend list was uncovered: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... users will also be able to choose whether to appear in other users' friends lists https://twitter.com/...
As Venmo takes this step in the right direction, it should make privacy the default, not an option buried in the settings. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
Update on this Venmo tweet: They added privacy protections to completely hide your friends list (why does this exist anyway) and to take you off other ppl's list. Very helpful! Details: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
Nothing like a public relations inferno to get a multibillion dollar company to change something people have warned them about for years. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
Honest question: Why are folks still using Venmo? Cash App, Apple Pay, and even Zelle are more private, have instant payments, and are free. Venmo is a privacy nightmare (by default). https://twitter.com/...
Having public-only friends list was a HUGE privacy issue for Venmo, one that they never budged on even when privacy advocates urged them. There was no way to make your account private or hide your contacts. Which put lots of people at risk.
As of now, Venmo's Friends List Privacy is on “Public” by default The screenshot shows “Private” was picked because I tapped the option as soon as I saw it
App privacy is something that should probably be considered before your company becomes the subject of a media debacle, especially one where you accidentally leak information about @POTUS https://twitter.com/...
After @wongmjane uncovered the feature, Venmo confirmed it to us: It will launch a way for people to make their friend lists private. The move comes after we found Joe Biden's secret Venmo account two weeks ago using public friend lists. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
@wongmjane @Venmo The defaults they choose is going to be important. The same applies for transactions being public by default. It's really wild that a payments company thinks sharing what you paid for and who you paid by default is a good idea. At least you can change it. https:…