PSA for US Congresspeople: here’s how to set your Venmo feed to private

Hi there, sure, it has come to my consideration that Matt Gaetz left his Venmo feed public and The Day by day Beast has used this public feed to report a salacious story about his transactions.

Yeah, you learn that proper. His Venmo feed was public.

People have been warning about Venmo’s public feeds for fairly a while. You possibly can work out loads about an individual by monitoring their monetary transactions by means of Venmo! In Gaetz’s case, we discovered he despatched cash — $900, in two transactions— to Joel Greenberg, who’s accused of intercourse trafficking. The morning after Gaetz despatched cash, Greenberg despatched three younger ladies sums of cash that totaled… $900.

I didn’t suppose this must be stated, however right here we’re: In case you have a Venmo account, and you’re a congressperson, please do me a strong and go test in your safety settings. You would possibly suppose, “Liz, why would you, a reporter, discourage transparency?” Nicely, as a result of reporters aren’t the one ones who snoop. Subsequent time it could be a state actor amassing damaging data! A public Venmo feed, particularly one with questionable transactions, is a strong option to amass private data — who you spend time with most, what you do collectively, and so forth.

Right here’s how: Go to the Venmo app in your telephone. Press on the hamburger menu. Then faucet “settings.” Subsequent, faucet “privateness.” You’re going to get three choices and the one you need is “personal” in order that solely you and the particular person you’re coping with get to see the transaction. I suppose you could possibly set it to “mates” however you’re a US Congressperson, so that you may need mates who’d leak to the press. Simply saying.

Now, you’ll want to do one thing else: conceal something public from the previous. Go to “privateness” and beneath “previous transactions,” set every little thing to personal.

That is infosec 101! Please embrace this text within the subsequent nationwide safety briefing. Clearly Congress wants to listen to it.