Adam Schultz/White House
At a time where national security is of grave concern given the amount of virtual meetings, schooling etc. that everyone is doing, and even that gas pipeline being hacked, one would think our government would be doing what they could to ensure our privacy. Well President Joe Biden just got exposed on of all things, Venmo. Unfortunately what was discovered wasn’t as juicy as say Matt Gaetz with reports of him paying for women to do lines of blow after political speaking gigs, but it’s pretty bad just the same.
Biden’s Venmo account was reportedly found by Buzzfeed in under 10 minutes. And what spawned them in doing this was the fact that an adviser told the NYTimes that he used Venmo to send his grandchildren money. Anyone who knows the app knows it’s just a place to snoop and look for dirt on other people because for God knows what reason, everyone’s transaction history is set to public by default. So even though a transaction might not say “hooker” or “gas” on it, and we use gas with extra air quotes, there’s plenty of inferences to make from searching people’s transaction history.
Luckily Biden, or whoever set up his account set his transaction history to private, but since his identity was found, that means that his family, friends and White House officials have all been found, many of which have public transaction histories available. So in other words, this is about to be the story that keeps on giving.
A Venmo spokesperson said, “The safety and privacy of all Venmo users and their information is always a top priority, and we take this responsibility very seriously.
“Customers always have the ability to make their transactions private and determine their own privacy settings in the app. We’re consistently evolving and strengthening the privacy measures for all Venmo users to continue to provide a safe, secure place to send and spend money.”
In 2018, Christine Bannan, then of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said, “Venmo is an unusual app because it combines social media with financial transactions. One of those is usually fairly public and one is usually very private, so it’s hard to gauge consumer expectations of privacy.”
Gennie Gebhart, acting activism director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation told BuzzFeed, “Venmo’s privacy failures are already a big problem for everyday folks who use Venmo, and that’s been the case for years.All of those problems are magnified when we’re talking about a major public figure.”
This is why I stay away from the app. It’s messy and we all know that old people don’t know how to change the settings on anything so God knows what’s about to come out about some White House officials because we know at least one of them are doing something they don’t have any business and are too stupid to cover up their tracks. Stand by for the drip as it comes out.
