Turn Off Location Access on Venmo to Avoid Having Your Address Shared

We’ve told you before to change your Venmo settings to private so the whole world doesn’t know which of your friends you are pestering to pay you back for the movie tickets from last weekend.

But that may not be enough to keep your app activity truly private. It’s still being shared with data collection companies, according to USA Today tech columnist Jefferson Graham. Graham discovered that data collection firm Braze has received records of his Venmo transactions, including his GPS location and the name of the recipient.

If you’re just a regular person using an app like Venmo, you wouldn’t have a clue this information is being shared. Graham worked with Disconnect, a security firm, to determine what information his apps were sharing with third parties. Graham thought setting his transactions to “private” was enough, but while that option stops the app from sharing your transactions with your peers and the general public, it doesn’t stop Venmo from doing anything else.

You should also take the time to go into your phone settings and turn off location access for Venmo. Doing so still allows you to use the app without a hitch.

If you’re curious, here’s what Venmo says about how it uses your personal information. Pay attention to the last bullet point on a list of stuff that seems pretty normal, like personalizing your user experience:

If you elect to share your Geolocation Information, we will use this information to enhance the security of the Services and we may use this information to provide you with location-specific options, functionality, offers, advertising, search results, or other location-specific content.

According to Venmo’s privacy rubric on the same page, you can’t limit much of the other information Venmo shares with third parties:

When you download apps, there’s an understood trade-off: to use that company’s product or service, you’ll have to share some of your personal information, especially if there are financial transactions involved.

But a good rule to follow is to visit each app’s settings to limit what information is shared outside that company as much as you can. If you don’t need location access turned on, then shut it off. There’s not much left you can keep private anymore, but you can at least try.

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