How to Make Venmo Private: Stop Your Payments from Being Public

Last updated: October 24, 2026

Your Venmo payments are public by default. According to Venmo's own Helpful Information page, accessed October 24, 2026, your initial default privacy setting is Public, so everyone on the internet can see your payments. Payment amounts are always secret, but anyone can see who you paid, when, and the note you wrote.

Quick answer: To make Venmo private, open the Venmo app, tap Me, then Settings, then Privacy, and select Private. Then tap Past Transactions under More and select Change All to Private. Finally, tap Friends List and select Private.

Every fact below comes from Venmo's Helpful Information page (October 2026), Venmo Help articles, the FTC's February 2018 press release and Federal Register complaint analysis, the Public By Default research project by Hang Do Thi Duc (2018), The Guardian's July 2018 investigation, and The Verge's March 2025 guide.

#Watch: Is your Venmo public?

This video explains how Venmo's default public setting works and how to change it to private.

#Is Venmo public by default?

Yes. Venmo's Helpful Information page, section "Who Can See My Transactions?", states:

"Your initial default privacy setting is Public, so everyone on the Internet can see your payments."

The page explains that you can select settings including Public (visible to everyone on the Internet), Friends, or Private (visible to sender and recipient only). Payment amounts are always secret, but your payments are visible unless you change the setting.

#What information is visible?

According to the FTC's proposed complaint analysis, published in the Federal Register on March 5, 2018:

"by default, all Venmo transactions are shared on Venmo's social news feed, which displays the names of the payer and recipient, the date of the transaction, and a message written by the user that initiated the transaction."

So if your setting is Public, people can see:

• The names of who paid and who received
• The date of the transaction
• The note you wrote

They cannot see the dollar amount.

#If I set it to Private, who can see?

Venmo's Helpful Information page states:

"Private (visible to sender and recipient only)."

And:

"If you and your friend use different privacy settings, we use the more restrictive one when you're paying each other."

So if you set your transactions to Private, only you and the person you're transacting with can see them. If your friend's setting is Public but yours is Private, Venmo uses Private for that transaction.

#What happened with public Venmo data

#207 million public transactions downloaded in 2018

In 2018, Hang Do Thi Duc, a Mozilla Foundation media fellow, reported on her project Public By Default (publicbydefault.fyi):

"In 2017, there were 207,984,218 public Venmo transactions And I looked at all of them!"

She used the public Venmo API to gather and save all public transactions from 2017. The data was gathered in January 2018. According to the Exposing the Invisible Kit (kit.exposingtheinvisible.org), no registration was necessary and no usage limits were applied.

Venmo later rate-limited the API and removed date parameters, so bulk downloads like hers are no longer possible, per a note on her site.

#What researchers found from public data

The Guardian reported on July 17, 2018, in the article "Venmo: how the payment app exposes our private lives" by Olivia Solon:

"Anyone can track a Venmo user's purchase history and glean a detailed profile – including their drug deals, eating habits and arguments – because the payment app lacks default privacy protections. This was the finding of a Berlin-based researcher, Hang Do Thi Duc, who analysed the more than 200 million public Venmo transactions made in 2017."

According to 22-8miles.com/public-by-default, Hang Do Thi Duc wrote that from the public data, she could "follow a drug dealer in real time, watch a couple fight viciously on Valentine's Day."

The Guardian summarized: she found drug deals, eating habits, and couples' arguments.

#What the FTC said about Venmo's privacy

On February 27, 2018, the FTC issued a press release titled "PayPal Settles FTC Charges that Venmo Failed to Disclose Information to Consumers About the Ability to Transfer Funds and Privacy Settings."

Acting FTC Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen stated:

"The payment service also misled consumers about how to keep their transaction information private."

The complaint alleged that "Venmo misled consumers about the extent to which they could control the privacy of their transactions."

The final order was issued May 24, 2018.

#How to make Venmo private

You can change your Venmo privacy setting to Private so only you and the person you're transacting with can see your payments. You can also hide all past transactions and set your friends list to private.

#Step 1: Change your default privacy to Private

Per Venmo Help, "Changing Payment Privacy & Hiding Past Payments":

1. Go to the Me tab
2. Tap the Settings gear at the top right
3. Tap Privacy
4. Choose Private

#Step 2: Hide all past transactions

Per The Verge's March 27, 2025 guide "How to keep your Venmo account private," in the Privacy menu under Settings:

1. Tap Past Transactions (under More)
2. Select Change All to Private

#Step 3: Set your friends list to Private

Per Venmo Help, "Adding & Removing Friends," and The Verge (March 2025):

1. In the Me tab, go to Settings > Privacy
2. Tap Friends List (near the bottom of the page)
3. Select Private

This hides your friends list from public view.

#What making Venmo private doesn't fix

#Your payment history is still stored

Changing your privacy setting hides your transactions from public view, but Venmo and PayPal still have a record of every transaction you've made. This is required for the service to work and for legal compliance.

#Past public data may still be out there

If your transactions were public before you changed the setting, they were visible to anyone on the internet at that time. Researchers, data brokers, or anyone else could have saved that data. Changing your setting now hides future transactions, but it doesn't erase old public data that was already collected.

#Your Venmo profile may still appear in search results

Even with Private transactions, your Venmo username and display name may still appear in Venmo's user search and in search engines if your profile was indexed before you changed your settings.

#Why Venmo privacy matters

Your payment history reveals a lot about you. It shows who you know, where you go, what you buy, and when you're active. Data like this can be used by:

• Stalkers or abusers tracking your location or routine
• Scammers targeting you with personalized phishing
• Employers or landlords checking your lifestyle
• Data brokers merging payment data with other profiles

Even without dollar amounts, the pattern of who you pay and what notes you write creates a detailed profile.

#Other apps and services that expose your data

Venmo's public-by-default setting is unusual, but many apps and services expose your information in other ways:

• People-search sites like TruePeopleSearch, Whitepages, and Spokeo publish your address, phone number, and relatives based on public records and data broker lists.
• Smart TVs can track what you watch second by second using Automatic Content Recognition (ACR).
• Email tracking pixels let senders see if you opened their email, when, and on what device.
• Period apps have been caught sharing health data with Facebook and Google, per the FTC.

Fixing your Venmo privacy is one step. To see where else your information is exposed, run a free check to find your profiles on data brokers, people-search sites, and leak forums.

Run a free privacy check

#Keep your data off data brokers

Even after you make Venmo private, your data can still spread through data brokers who buy and resell personal information from public records, social media, and app data. UndoLeak erases your data from data brokers and keeps it off.

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#Sources

1. Venmo, "Helpful Information," section "Who Can See My Transactions?" (accessed October 24, 2026): venmo.com/legal/us-helpful-information
2. Federal Trade Commission, "PayPal, Inc.; Analysis to Aid Public Comment," Federal Register, Vol. 83, No. 43 (March 5, 2018): federalregister.gov/documents/2018/03/05/2018-04331/paypal-inc-analysis-to-aid-public-comment
3. Hang Do Thi Duc, "Public By Default" (2018): publicbydefault.fyi
4. Tactical Tech, "Public By Default," Exposing the Invisible Kit: kit.exposingtheinvisible.org/en/venmo.html
5. Olivia Solon, "Venmo: how the payment app exposes our private lives," The Guardian (July 17, 2018): theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/17/venmo-payments-app-default-privacy-settings-public-information
6. Federal Trade Commission, "PayPal Settles FTC Charges that Venmo Failed to Disclose Information to Consumers About the Ability to Transfer Funds and Privacy Settings" (February 27, 2018): ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2018/02/paypal-settles-ftc-charges-venmo-failed-disclose-information-consumers-about-ability-transfer-funds
7. Venmo Help, "Changing Payment Privacy & Hiding Past Payments": help.venmo.com/cs/articles/changing-payment-privacy-hiding-past-payments-vhel191
8. Venmo Help, "Adding & Removing Friends": help.venmo.com/cs/articles/adding-removing-friends-vhel249
9. Barbara Krasnoff, "How to keep your Venmo account private," The Verge (March 27, 2025): theverge.com/how-to/637215/venmo-privacy-how-to

All names, transactions, and feed examples shown in the video are fictional and recreated for illustration. Venmo screenshots and API responses in the video are simplified recreations, not actual screenshots. This is general information, not legal advice.