VenMo now allows users to hide their friends list after Biden’s discovery

Venmo has confirmed the new feature to BuzzFeed News, telling the publication that it’s enhancing its “in-app controls providing customers an option to select a public, friends-only, or private setting for their friends list.” The publication says some users have already set their lists to private, but the feature may take some time to make its way to everyone. 

Critics and groups like the EFF have been calling out Venmo for years now for not giving users the ability to hide their friends lists. It’s a privacy and security issue, seeing as it makes it easy for anyone to look up who’s paying who. EFF Associate Director of Research Gennie Gebhart said back in 2019: “Your bank doesn’t put details of your financial transactions into a public timeline, and Venmo shouldn’t either without your affirmative consent.”

While the option to hide friends lists now exists, critics believe Venmo’s action is still lacking. As Kaili Lambe, a senior campaigner with Mozilla, told BuzzFeed News: “… consumers shouldn’t have to dig around in product settings to find basic privacy protections. Consumers expect privacy to be the default and so do we.”