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PUBLIC BY DEFAULT Venmo Stories of 2017 Did you know there is an app that makes it super easy to send money to your friends, your partner, your roommate or your drug dealer? It is called ​Venmo​ and only available in the United States. On Venmo, all transactions are public by default – anyone can see them, even if they don’t use the app. Venmo users can change this setting in​ ​a few steps, but many still leave their transactions for the whole world to see. " payment_id ": #,

" permalink ": "/story/321publicpage",

" comments ": [...],

" audience ": "public",

" actor ":

"username": "first-last-#",

"picture": "https://venmopics...",

" firstname ": "First",

" lastname ": "Last",

"date_created": "YY/MM/DD hr:min", target ":

"username": "first-last-#",

"picture": "https://graph.facebook...",

" firstname ": "First",

" lastname ": "Last",

"date_created": "YY/MM/DD hr:min",

" created_time ": "YY/MM/DD hr:min",

" message ": " ",

" type ": "payment" or "charge,

" likes ": [...] ":": "YY/MM/DD hr:min",": "",": "payment" or "charge,": [...] To see for yourself, go see the ​data of latest transaction on Venmo​. That URL is live on the Internet for *anyone* to see. In 2017, there were 207,984,218 public Venmo transactions And I looked at all of them! By visiting ​this public URL​, I was able to see every name, every date, and every message sent. I used this data to explore the lives of 5 unsuspecting humans who use the Venmo platform.







Meet the humans

of Venmo

The Venmo God

The Cannabis Retailer The Corn Dealer The Lovers The YOLOist The All Americans In the 200M+ transactions I discovered 5 personal ​stories. The story of the Venmo God summarizes the superhuman insights gained from all public transactions.

The Cannabis Retailer With access to the first name, I could infer that this person was male. I was also able to determine that he operates out of Santa Barbara, California. You might wonder how: some of his customers have a Facebook URL as their profile picture which includes their Facbeook ID and so it was easy for me to see where some of them, and therefore the protagonist of this story as well, live. His very first transaction looks something like this:

" audience ": "public",

" actor ":

"picture": "https://s3.amazonaws.com/venmo/no-image.gif",

" firstname ": "his first name",

" lastname ": "his last name",

"date_created": "2017-01-24T00:41:09",

" target ":

" picture ": " https://graph.fb.com/v2/[redacted FB ID] ",

" firstname ": "customer's first name",

" lastname ": "customer's last name",

"date_created": "2014-07-11T01:27:36",

"created_time": "2017-01-25T06:03:04Z",

" message ": "for cbd",

" type ": "charge" He registered on January 24, 2017, a day before his first transaction, and had a total of ​943 transactions in 2017. 920 incoming 23 outgoing Filter: You probably noticed that ​cbd/CBD​ comes up a lot — 150 times to be exact. It's the abbreviation of "Cannabidiol [...] one of at least 113 cannabinoids identified in cannabis" (Wikipedia). Other frequent messages include delivery, order, , , and headband, "an exotic strain of marijuana" (Urban Dictionary). My hunch is that even the ​"grocery"​ transactions refer to drug deals — there are 36 incoming transactions from 23 different people with this topic. No one I know buys groceries this way. Seems like business is going well! He even has the cash to hire someone: Someone I’ve called Ronny made the following 19 payments to the drug dealer throughout the year with references to cannabis. This is Ronny

Registered

Sep 2014 Real names were replaced with fake ones. Warning If you don’t want Google to think you are interested in cannabis, you might want to log out of Google before or clean your cookies after you click on the links below. I was able to learn a lot about weed examining these transactions. Terms like Gorilla Cookie, Stacked Kush, GDP (abbreviation for Granddaddy Purple), and God's gift seem to refer to different strains of cannabis. I should note that his business is legal in the state of California. It seems, however, that eventually, our dealer felt like these transactions didn't need to be public on the internet — he has since changed his settings to make all of his transactions private (you should, too!). Good job, dude! But this illustrates the problem — once your information is public, it's very difficult to get it back! That’s why you should change your Venmo privacy settings. < all stories

The Corn Dealer This Venmo human operates an incredibly successful food cart. Students from the University of California Santa Barbara get their fix of elotes, mangos, raspados, tostilocos, and chicharrones here. The cart vendor had a total of 8026 transactions in 2017. He registered on February 23, 2016. 8006 incoming 20 outgoing The food cart's most frequent customer – let's just call her Cecile – came here 34 times in 2017, almost every week (except in the summer) and always around the same time. Because Venmo data is often public, anybody can learn ​when​ you're craving ​what​ food and where to find you. While Cecile's hunger being public knowledge may not seem a big deal to you, many people have reason to keep their whereabouts private. ​Victims of domestic abuse​, for example. I had to wonder if these hungry students understood that they were broadcasting their location with every bite. Let's see a timelapse of Cecile's 34 purchases! 2017 Visits 0 0 x Elote 0 x Raspado 0 x Gracias 0 x Mango 0 x Tostilocos 0 x Takilocos 0 x Papas 0 x Chicharrón 0 x Diablito 0 x Esquite Play 5x 3x 1x As you can see here, elote is this young woman's favorite. It's also the overall most popular item with ​30%​ (or 2509) of all transactions including the word "elote", "corn," or the corn emoji. In case you don't know what it is: "Elote (Nahuatl: ēlōtl [ˈeːloːt͡ɬ]),

or corn on the cob is a popular street food in Mexico, although it is frequently served at home prepared in the same way (boiled or grilled in husk).[1] It is customarily consumed on a stick, or by grasping the husk of the cob that has been pulled down to form a handle". Condiments such as salt, chili powder, butter, cheese, lemon juice or lime juice, mayonnaise, and sour cream (or crema) are usually added to the elote.



Another way of presenting elotes is by serving the cut kernels in a bowl. In the southern and central areas of Mexico, people call this esquites instead of elote. Any of the toppings above are added to the corn and it is then eaten with a spoon.



In the southern and central urban zones of Mexico, ready-to-eat boiled elotes are usually sold by street vendors or in stands, but in the rest of Mexico elotes are more frequently sold in stores or restaurants. The elotes are boiled in water or grilled over coals and condiments of the customer's choosing are added when sold."



Quote from a transaction message – April 13, 2017 3:27pm 1861 x Mango, 719 x Raspado/Shaved Ice , 299 x Tostilocos, 223 x Chicharrones and 696 x Various Orders (e.g. "esquite", "chips", "churros", "papas", "doritos", "taki", " ", "diablito", "tostitos"). If you don’t like the idea of anyone being able to place your location from your financial transactions, you should change your Venmo privacy settings. < all stories

The Lovers Forget soap operas and romantic novels — Venmo is the best place to find drama. I discovered these two couples’ stories while looking for transactions with the most comments. You can find whole conversations in Venmo comments, almost like a chat! Here’s what it looks like in the data:

" audience ": "public",

" actor ":

"picture": "https://venmopics.appspot.com/[redacted]",

" firstname ": "[Gonzalo's redacted name]",

" lastname ": "[Gonzalo's redacted name]",

"date_created": "2017-01-14T23:21:26",

" target ":

"picture": "https://venmopics.appspot.com/[redacted]",

" firstname ": "[Susana's redacted name]",

" lastname ": "[Susana's redacted name]",

"date_created": "2017-01-20T23:30:24",

" created_time ": "2017-02-14T02:35:18Z",

" message ": "Food",

" type ": "payment"

" comments ":

"actor": "Gonzalo",

"created_time": "2017-02-14T03:04:11Z",

" message ": "Lmk if you got it",



"actor": "Susana",

"created_time": "2017-02-14T03:07:40Z",

" message ": "I returned it back to you",



"actor": "Susana",

"created_time": "2017-02-14T03:07:45Z",

" message ": "Yo leave me alone",

Interestingly, all four of these lovers (and in fact most people who comment frequently) have very few transactions in the whole year of 2017. This makes me wonder: are they familiar enough with the platform to know that everything is public by default? While Venmo’s interface encourages this type of social conversation, do users fully understand that anyone can view their chats? A sad story To protect their privacy, I am going to call the protagonists of the first story Susana and Gonzalo. They decided to discuss their relationship matters in public. Or was that really a conscious choice? The two of them were also quite new to the app at the time this happened — they registered for Venmo on January 14 and January 20. A happy story In this story you can witness how Breezy and Pedro — two aliases — start to get to know each other in public. They discuss specific transaction amounts and their living situation in Clute, TX and Houston, TX. After exchanging messages every day (sometimes in real time) for about a week (October 20-28), they decided to move on from Venmo. I hope it had a happy ending! Pedro and Breezy are also fairly new users, having registered on September 6 and October 8, respectively. Do you also have extensive conversations in the comment sections of Venmo transactions? These are public by default, too! Go into your Venmo privacy settings to change that. < all stories

The YOLOist You only live once, right? This young female with a name of ​Greek origin​ certainly enjoys life to the fullest. Let's just call her Calista. Calista has been using Venmo since March 24, 2017 and accumulated ​2033​ transactions in the following 8 months. 521 incoming 1512 outgoing Here's how one of her many transactions looks like.

" audience ": "public",

" actor ":

"picture": "https://venmopics.appspot.com/[redacted]",

" firstname ": "[Calista's redacted name]",

" lastname ": "[Calista's redacted name]",

"date_created": "2017-03-24T17:39:30",

" target ":

" picture ": " https://graph.fb.com/v2/[redacted FB ID] ",

" firstname ": "[friend's redacted name]",

" lastname ": "[friend's redacted name]",

"date_created": "2016-12-10T13:06:10",

" created_time ": "2017-04-13T19:10:29Z",

" message ": "Coke",

" type ": "payment" It's not clear where she lives, but some of the people in her network live in Texas and Mexico City. Note: All public transactions include the URLs to each person's profile picture. Some URLs include the Facebook ID, so one can see their public information at facebook.com/FACEBOOKID. Venmo users are encouraged to submit captions to describe transactions. Our hedonistic friend described her consumption habits with words and emojis, and the emerging portrait is not a healthy one. She might want to consider that it has become​ common for insurance companies to monitor social media​ to verify health claims. 965 transactions for sodas, alcoholic drinks, fast food and sweets in 8 months really don't seem very healthy to me. Calista My Consumption 2017 Some messages above have been modified for better readibility. "Coke" and "Soda" were replaced with "🥤", and the following messages were replaced with the closest matching emoji: ":festival_beer:", ":rocket_popsicle:", ":america_cake:", ":candy_cane:", "drinkk", "drink", ":candy_corn:", "candy", ":festival_grilled_cheese:", "cokkies", "chesse", "pizzas". Furthermore, numbers and words like e.g. "para ti" and "for" were removed as they do not change the meaning of the message. Our YOLO girl just looooves Coke (280x), (248x) and (209x). She shared her 280 Cokes with 37 people last year. The majority of her transaction messages are also very short – often just 1-2 emojis or words – and don't vary a lot, which shows a certain routine. What does she do and share with her 3 besties? Here are each of their 5 most used messages. 200

transactions 51 x Coke 27 x 17 x 17 x 16 x

159

transactions 29 x 25 x Coke 20 x 14 x 12 x

148

transactions 31 x 25 x 22 x 20 x 18 x

Do you want an artist (or anybody really) to be able to judge your diet from data they’re able to freely download from the Internet? If not, change your Venmo privacy settings. < all stories

The All Americans This married couple (they share a last name) owns a ​dog​ and a ​car​ which they prefer to fuel at Chevron about every two weeks. They really like ​pizza​ (their favorite is from Shakey's), but they occasionally also eat Asian and German food. And they buy a lot of ​groceries​.

" audience ": "public",

" actor ":

"picture": "https://s3.amazonaws.com/venmo/no-image.gif",

" firstname ": "[wife's redacted name]",

" lastname ": "[couple's redacted last name]",

"date_created": "2015-08-14T00:55:16",

" target ":

"picture": "https://s3.amazonaws.com/venmo/no-image.gif",

" firstname ": "[husband's redacted name]",

" lastname ": "[couple's redacted last name]",

"date_created": "2017-01-07T21:04:05Z",

"created_time": "2017-01-25T06:03:04Z",

" message ": " ",

" type ": "payment" ": "public",":":"created_time": "2017-01-25T06:03:04Z",": "",": "payment" Most of the time money is flowing from the wife to the husband, however insurance, rent and loan is paid by the husband to the wife. They had 503 transactions between each other. 457 woman paid 46 man paid 20 transactions last year were about loan, usually paid Thursday, Friday or Saturday. It's always the same person making payments to the other, though not always in full ​not consistently​ at the beginning or end of the month. 3 transactions are charges, meaning the person who pays the loan requests money. Our married couple is a great example of how your transactions can reveal a lot about you, including habits and routines. By far the most transactions are for grocery stores – 25 x Walmart, 19 x Albertsons and 15 x CostCo. They went to Aldi and Walgreens a few times. They go shopping more than once a week, but almost never on Wednesday or Sunday. Looking at all transactions, I believe that the both of them live in Orange County, CA​.. There are 8 transactions including the term SDG&E. San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) "provides natural gas and electricity to San Diego County and southern Orange County in southwestern California". They visited a theater in the region (Regal Eastvale), "Chicago Ribs" appears 5 times (could be a reference to the "Chicago for Ribs" restaurant that has 3 locations (Los Angeles, San Pedro and Redondo Beach), and LAX, the airport in Los Angeles, is mentioned twice about one month apart. Other transactions that support this assumption include the In n out, Aldi (within California only in the south), and "Banfield Pet Hospital". The two of them are real brand name shoppers — including the ones mentioned above there are 31 in total: Albertsons

Aldi

AMC

99 cent store

Barnes Noble

Bath and Body Works

Bed Bath and Beyond

Chevron

Cold Stone

CostCo

CVS

DD discount

Denny's

Dollar Tree

Dominos

Home Depot

IHop

Ikea

In n out

Jack in the Box

KFC

Kmart

McDonalds

Panda Express

Regal

Staples

Shell

Target

Ulta

Walgreens

Walmart Social networks already serve ads to us based on what we like and watch. Why give up even more information about yourself publicly? Change those Venmo privacy settings. < all stories