Understanding the Hidden Privacy Risks in Social Payment Apps (Venmo, Cash App, etc.)

It’s easier than ever to quickly pay friends, family members, acquaintances, and strangers, thanks to apps like Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, and PayPal, among others. These apps work hard to educate their consumers on how to avoid scams, but what about the privacy risks that they don’t tell users about?

The default settings on many of these apps–especially Venmo–may expose information about your spending habits that you may prefer to keep private. Even if you don’t think of yourself as someone with a lot of “secrets” about how you spend your money, there are risks to unknowingly sharing information about yourself with the public.

To protect yourself from these hidden privacy risks, it is best to become educated on how these platforms work and why it’s risky for your information to be widely accessible online to anyone with an internet connection and a device.

What are the Default Settings on Venmo?

For new Venmo users and those who have never changed their settings, the social feed is set to “Public.” This means that all transactions and the notes accompanying them are visible to anyone who is on the internet. The only thing that is private to the people in the transaction is the total.

In other words, if you send a babysitter $50 on Venmo and say “babysitting for Xander” in the memo, anyone on the internet can see:

The fact that you paid the babysitter
The babysitter’s name
The name of your child

The public will not see the amount that you paid the sitter, but do you really want everyone to know your child’s name or babysitter’s name?

To remove your Venmo activity from the public eye, you need to change the default setting from public to Friends or Private. Find these in the app’s privacy settings.

Your options are:

Public, in which anyone on the internet can see the transaction details and memo/note
Friends, in which only you, the recipient, and any of your shared friends can see those details
Private, in which only you and the recipient can see the translation details

You may need to adjust your past payment visibility by clicking “More” under the Privacy Settings section of your account.

How Default Settings Expose Your Private Life

Let’s explore some of the ways in which the default settings on Venmo could expose sensitive information to the public.

These “notes” may seem harmless, but what are they revealing to the whole world about your life?

Health details: “Thanks for picking up my prescription” or “Advil + emotional support”
Political activities: “Donation for the rally” or “[Candidate’s Name] 2024 fundraiser”
Substance use: References to bars, dispensaries, or party supplies
Location patterns: Regular payments to the same gym, restaurants, or services near your home
Relationship status: Split bills, date nights, or breakup-related payments

A 2022 USC Viterbi study analyzed 389 million public Venmo messages. The results? Millions of “privacy leaks” where users unknowingly broadcast intimate details of their lives.

Unfortunately, Cash App isn’t much better. Their public profiles and social feed features create similar exposure risks. Zelle’s bank integration means your transaction descriptions are likely only visible to bank employees.

The real problem? Most people treat payment descriptions like private text messages between friends. They’re not. They’re public announcements to anyone with internet access.

The Social Web of Financial Data

Your friends list is a goldmine for bad actors. That same kind of relationship mapping is also used in more advanced intrusions, which is why it helps to know who is usually behind APT attacks. Scammers can use the seemingly innocent things people add to their Venmo transactions to cause a lot of damage. As we’ve covered, unless you’ve changed your settings, your entire Venmo friends list is public information. This seemingly innocent feature has serious consequences.

Just ask the politicians, athletes, and public figures who have had a wide range of scandals and controversies related to their Venmo use.

High profile Venmo leaks:

Joe and Jill Biden: BuzzFeed News located the presidential couple’s accounts in 2021, revealing their friends’ lists which displayed connections to family members and staff before both accounts were removed.
Matt Gaetz: The Florida representative’s Venmo payments became part of a federal investigation after reports indicated transactions to an individual subsequently convicted of sex trafficking charges involving a minor.
Peter Hegseth: The American Prospect identified a public Venmo account associated with the media figure in February 2025, showing connections to defense industry executives and other notable contacts.
Jason Kelce: A Consumer Reports investigation in 2024 found the NFL player’s account contained publicly accessible contact information and transaction descriptions for everyday purchases.
Travis Kelce: The same Consumer Reports review discovered the Kansas City Chiefs player maintained a visible contact list on his Venmo account.
John Mateer: The college quarterback’s alleged Venmo transaction records, which appeared to reference betting activities, circulated widely on social media in 2025 before being removed.
Sean Spicer: The former press secretary’s Venmo account was identified by users in 2017, leading to numerous unsolicited payment requests with accompanying messages.
J.D. Vance: Wired reported in July 2024 that the vice presidential candidate’s public friends list revealed connections to political staff and media contacts before privacy settings were adjusted.
Mike Waltz: A March 2025 Wired investigation showed the National Security Adviser’s public friends list included personal contacts such as medical providers and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

The same features that caused these public figures to go through minor to serious public backlash can give scammers the opportunity to take advantage of ordinary people.

How criminals exploit your social connections

For regular users, the risks are different but equally real:

Stalkers can identify people close to you
Scammers study your relationships to impersonate friends and family
Ex-partners can monitor your social circle and new relationships
Identity thieves map your network to find additional targets

The data harvesting problem

In 2018, a security researcher scraped 207 million public Venmo transactions. That massive dataset revealed users’ dating lives, spending habits, and personal relationships—all because the information was public by default.

Here’s the scary part: once your data is scraped, it doesn’t disappear. It can be stored, analyzed, and sold indefinitely.

Payment history shown as a source of vulnerability, highlighting how scammers constantly find new ways to exploit shared financial information.

How Scammers Use Your Payment History

The list of ways that a scammer could use your payment history against you is endless, because these tricksters are incredibly creative. Scams change every day.

Consider these scenarios:

Scenario 1: The fake friend emergency

A scammer sees you regularly pay “Sarah M.” for coffee or lunch. They create a fake account with Sarah’s name and photo (found via your Venmo friends list), then message: “Hey! My phone died, and I’m locked out of my real Venmo. Can you send $50 to this account? I’ll pay you back tomorrow when I get my phone working.”

Scenario 2: The landlord impersonation

Scammers take note of monthly payments to the same person with notes like “rent” or your apartment number. They contact you, claiming to be your landlord with a new payment account, saying the old one was compromised. They already know your payment amount and schedule, making it seem legitimate. You end up sending your rent money to the scammer, which you probably can’t get back. Even worse, your real landlord will still want your rent for the month.

Scenario 3: The shared expense trap

A fraudster sees you frequently split bills with a group of friends (concert tickets, dinner reservations, and rideshares). They join the group chat or create a fake account mimicking one member, then send a payment request. “Hey everyone, I covered the Uber a few weeks ago – $18 each!” Since you’re used to these requests from this group, you might pay without questioning it.

Platform-Specific Vulnerabilities

Venmo has the most social features and highest privacy risk due to its public-by-default settings and friends list visibility.

Cash App creates discovery risks through public profiles and the ability for users to search for others by username or phone number.

Zelle presents different challenges—while it has fewer social features, its bank integration can make fraudulent transactions harder to reverse, and customer service processes vary by institution.

Beyond social engineering, these apps have technical security issues. Weak authentication methods that allow takeovers, difficulties in reversing fraudulent payments once they’re sent, and varying levels of encryption and data protection across platforms.

How to Protect Your Privacy When Using Payment Apps

This is the most important question you can ask! The answer can keep you safe as you continue to use social payment apps for convenience.

First, change your privacy settings. Don’t wait to do this—log into your payment apps and make these changes immediately:

Set default transaction visibility to “Private” or “Friends Only”
Make your friends list private
Disable phone number discovery
Turn off social feed features
Review and hide past public transactions

In Venmo specifically, navigate to Settings > Privacy and change “Past Transactions” and “Default Privacy Setting” to Private. You’ll also want to click “More” under Privacy Settings to adjust visibility on older payments individually if needed.

Use smart payment description strategies

When leaving a description for a transaction, replace revealing details with neutral alternatives:

Instead of: “Chiropractor appointment”
Use: “Thursday appointment”

Instead of: “Allergy shot”
Use: “Doctor visit”

Instead of: “Gym membership – January”
Use: “Membership dues”

Instead of: “Haircut at Salon Blue”
Use: “Haircut”

Instead of: “Dog’s vet checkup”
Use: “Vet visit”

Instead of: “Dinner at Chang’s on Main St”
Use: “Dinner”

Instead of: “Gas money for trip to mom’s house”
Use: “Gas money”

Instead of: “Babysitting for Emma and Jack”
Use: “Babysitting”

Instead of: “Rent for 42 Maple Street Apt 3B”
Use: “Rent”

Instead of: “Tuesday therapy session”
Use: “Appointment”

Instead of: “Dentist – root canal”
Use: “Dentist”

The goal is to keep descriptions functional enough that you remember what the payment was for, but vague enough that strangers learn nothing about your life.

If you’re going to use social apps, take appropriate precautions

No one can deny that social payment apps offer a lot of convenience, but that simplicity comes with some serious privacy trade-offs

Fortunately, you don’t have to choose between convenience and security. By understanding how these platforms expose your information and taking proactive steps to lock down your settings, you can enjoy quick digital payments without broadcasting your personal life to the world. The important thing is to remember that these apps are designed to be social first and private second. Potecting yourself means actively working against their defaults.