Thread by @BuzzFeedNews

We found Joe Biden’s Venmo account in less than 10 minutes — revealing major security concerns for the first family and everyone who uses the payment app.

buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanma…

Using Venmo’s publicly available tools, we found accounts belonging to the president's children, grandchildren, and senior White House officials.

Biden’s transactions aren’t public, and BuzzFeed News is not identifying usernames due to national security concerns.

Privacy advocates have warned about Venmo’s security problems for years, with no other major social network or service having friends lists publicly accessible by default to anyone.

Venmo’s friends lists, which are public and cannot be made private, provide an avenue into someone’s personal life that can be exploited by anyone including trolls, stalkers, police, and foreign spies.

One major problem with public Venmo accounts for government officials is that anyone can send money — it isn’t possible to reject a payment, or restrict incoming payments to “friends only”.

Using his account, anyone, anywhere, can send Joe Biden money, and he can’t reject it.

After BuzzFeed News reached out to the White House for this story, all the friends on the president’s Venmo account were removed.

buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanma…