Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Don't Make These Venmo Mistakes

Episode Date: August 10, 2021

If you don’t want your ex stalking you on Venmo, you need to follow the tips in today’s episode! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Well, it doesn't. Charge for wasting our time. I will take a check. Like an old school check. You recognize her from anchoring on CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg. The only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. Nicole Lappin. This might not be breaking news, but the days of having to carry a checkbook around with you

are over. I mean, really, really over. You'd be surprised to hear how many people I meet that don't even know how to write a check. And that's because checkbooks have gone by the way of the Blackberry or the Dodo bird. They've been eclipsed by digital alternatives, Venmo, PayPal, Zelle, Google Wallet, Apple Pay. You get it. There are tons of options for transferring money digitally with slight differences depending on your preference. You might use one over the other. But as a whole, the world of exchanging money with a click of a button makes things easy, breezy, and beautiful most of the time. Money apps bring greater convenience to the table,

of course. But as so often is the case with the digital landscape in general, with more convenience comes less privacy. Today, we're tackling that head on thanks to this question from listener Matt. Hey, we're tackling that head on. Thanks to this question from listener Matt. Hey, Nicole, I saw on your Instagram, your interview on what's going on with Venmo. What do you think about the privacy stuff? Is there something I need to be doing to ensure that my information is kept private? If you missed my Venmo segment on HLN, first of all, what have you been doing with your life on a Sunday morning? But second of all, I'll give you the lowdown on what I covered. Venmo is one of the laundry list of mobile apps

designed to exchange money between users. You probably know that. You might not know, though, it's owned by PayPal, yet another platform designed for exchanging money. It's like a nesting doll of money exchanges. And it's not just Matt's go-to. Venmo currently has around 70 million customers. If you've never used the platform before, let me paint the picture for you. You pull open the app on your phone, and once you log in, it's super duper easy to start a new transaction. All you have to do is enter the phone number or username of the person who will be receiving the moolah. Then you enter the amount you're sending and the little message. If you're receiving the money, it's even easier. You don't have to do a thing.

The money will just appear in your Venmo account like magic. So that's what the app looks like if you're actually sending money. But that's not the first thing you see when you open the app. The homepage of Venmo is a list of public transactions between Venmo users, likely Venmo users you know. You can't see the amount of money that's being exchanged between two people, but you can see who the sender is and who the recipient is. And you can also see the message associated with the transaction. Some savvy social media users will tell you that Venmo, more so than LinkedIn, more so than even Instagram, but Venmo is the best place to stalk your ex. Take it from one of our Money Rehab producers. She found out that her ex

is now living with his new girlfriend because on his Venmo profile, he sent his girlfriend a payment with the message, utilities. But not everyone wants to be stalked by their ex. And so customers have complained about this feature, citing that the process for opting into Venmo's privacy features is confusing. Enter the FTC, or the Federal Trade Commission. It's the government group in charge of protecting consumers. The FTC has been investigating Venmo because, according to them, Venmo has misled customers about how these privacy settings work. And this is all on the heels of BuzzFeed reporters actually finding President Biden's Venmo account. Yes, I told you that Venmo is the best platform for stalking. The reporters were able to map out President Biden's transactions and see who he was sending money to. I mean,

can you imagine Joe Biden paying Jill Biden, the first lady, back for a cup of coffee or a smoothie? Joe Biden paying Barack Obama for drinks last night? Great to see you, man. I mean, suffice it to say, since then, the president and the first lady have reportedly shut down their Venmo accounts. Amidst the scrutiny, Venmo has announced that they're taking away this homepage view with public transactions. In the official statement, the company said, as part of our ongoing efforts to continually evolve the Venmo platform while staying true to the heart of the Venmo experience, we're removing the global feed and the friends feed is now the only social feed that will appear. In other words, you won't

be able to see everyone's transactions. You'll only see the transactions with your contacts who you've added to your friends list on Venmo. But do you want your friends to see your transactions with your contacts who you've added to your friends list on Venmo. But do you want your friends to see your transactions? How you're spending money can be very personal. To prove this point, my producers and I went through our Venmo history. Hold on to your wallets, boys and girls. Money Rehab will be right back. rehab will be right back. Now for some more money rehab. Hi, I'm Morgan and I'm one of the producers on the show. Hi, I'm Mike. I'm the other producer on the show. And we are in the studio right now, which is not where we actually recorded this segment. Yes, the audio quality will drop. So you're going to be able to hear it. But pretend that you can't. Let's talk about Venmo

and cut to the segment that we've already recorded. All of us have seen things that we didn't want to see about our exes on Venmo. Like me, the story about finding out that my ex moved in with his new girlfriend over Venmo. That was me. Surprise. Even though it sounds like you both are maybe a little bit better at not stalking exes on more traditional platforms like Instagram, where I definitely still do. But I can sort of tell myself that on Instagram, like they're choosing to present the best of themselves. But on Venmo, there's no filter for that. You're just seeing the day to day minutia of them going about the people that they're still close to and exchanging money with. Let's be serious here. You don't really wish the best

for your ex. And Venmo is proof that they're living and living like, well, you know, unless these Venmo requests are like collection fees, you know, money that I owned and they never are. The bail bond. Right, exactly. Especially if you were dumped, like I was dumped. I'm not wishing for the best for her, but you know, I don't have any Venmo's to women. My Venmo's are to my roommate about, you know,

utilities and, you know, Mexican food. And that's it. But speaking of Mexican food, I saw an ex recently to pay somebody back for tacos. And I was equally upset because I wanted them to be in the fetal position 24-7 after our breakup. Like, they're not allowed to have fun. Yeah.

For eating tacos. Get out of here. I'm just looking at my main feed, and I'm seeing someone that I went to high school with charging someone I don't know for cheese curds. What does that mean? Do I need to know about that? Probably not. don't know for cheese curds. What does that mean? Do I need to know about that? Probably not.

And then my, this, this girl that I've never heard of is charging my best friend's college boyfriend for bed frame, part one, bed frame, part two, which I don't fully understand. And then mattress part two also don't understand. Also, I see one that's for Molly LSD meth in parentheses crystal. This is not a joke. Are you kidding? No, I'm not kidding. I don't know if people are just trying to be hilarious, but also if I'm an employer, I am an employer and I'm looking up all social media networks, which Venmo technically is, I don't know if that would be a joke. I get really paranoid because when I first started dating my boyfriend, he sent me a

Venmo. He reimbursed me on Venmo for plan B. And I was like, oh my God, my mom's going to see this and she's going to kill me. And so it's like I checked a million times to make sure my settings were on the highest privacy. But it's really easy not to do that. Like, Mike, you were saying you don't even know what privacy level you're opted into. Not even not even a remote idea. Are you now scrolling through your own account and realizing that maybe you don't want your mom to see how often your friends are charging each other back and forth for alcohol runs. Let's take a second and make sure all of the privacy settings are on. To do that, first open up Venmo.

Then click on the icon on the top right of your screen. It looks like three horizontal lines. Then click settings, which has a little wheel or cog icon thingy. Then click privacy. You'll see that in your default privacy settings, there are three options, public, friends, and private. So in this upcoming Venmo update, that public setting will be gone, but you'll still be able to choose between allowing your friends to see your transactions, or that private option where the transactions can only be viewed between the sender and the recipient. I would highly recommend opting for

the latter, the private option. Here's the last step that I think a lot of folks are still missing, though. Under the default privacy settings, you'll see a button that says pass transactions at the bottom of your page. You will want to click the second option that says change all to private. If you don't click this past transactions button, the privacy settings you just selected will only apply to your future transactions. But any ex trying to stalk you will be able to see your plan B transactions up until today or whatever day you decide to go Venmo ghost mode. For today's tip, you can take straight to the bank. Even though Venmo is positioning this update as an effort to protect your privacy, you still need to make sure you are doing your part in

protecting yourself. I strongly recommend that you opt into the settings that make all Venmo transactions private. I can think of very few situations where you would want your friends to see everything you're paying people for. So err on the side of caution. This is the one situation that I would say ghosting is a good thing. Money Rehab is a production of iHeartMedia your host nicole lappen our producers are morgan lavoie and katherine law money rehab is edited and engineered by brandon dickert with help from josh fisher executive producers are mangas hatikader and will pearson huge thanks to the og money rehab supervising producer, Michelle Lanz, for her

pre-production and development work. And as always, thanks to you for finally investing in yourself so that you can get it together and get it all. You spend my money, money, money, money, money, money. You spend my money, money, money.