President Joe Biden’s secret Venmo account has been identified on Friday. Cyber sleuths claimed that they found it within 10 minutes of starting their search along with uncovering his network of relatives, friends and allies.
Campaigners said that the ease with which they tracked down the world’s most powerful man highlights privacy vulnerabilities of the popular peer-to-peer payment app.
And it will pose an immediate headache to the White House which carefully guards the president’s security.
While the full extent of the attack is unknown, an anonymous US official labelled it “the worst hacking case in the history of America.”
“They got into everything,” the official added.
Given that our nation is on high alert after the U.S. State Department, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and elements of the Department of Defense have reportedly been seriously compromised, wouldn’t it make sense that every effort would be made to ensure Joe Biden’s banking business and the list of his contacts would be protected?
Unfortunately, this administration is singularly focused on bankrupting our nation, leaving everyday Americans to wonder what they’re doing to protect our nation’s security—especially when it comes to our tech-savvy “President,” who thinks Americans are still listening to music from records being played on their phonographs.
Using the app’s built-in search tool and public friends feature, digital detectives at Buzzfeed News were able to map a network of the Biden family, including grandchildren, senior White House officials and their contacts.
It took a matter of minutes, they said.
All the contacts on the president’s Venmo account were removed after asking the White House for a statement.
Privacy campaigners have long expressed concern about Venmo.
It makes transactions public by default. And there is no way to set an account’s friends to list private.
‘Venmo’s privacy failures are already a big problem for everyday folks who use Venmo, and that’s been the case for years,’ Gennie Gebhart, the acting activism director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told BuzzFeed News.
All of those problems are magnified when we’re talking about a major public figure.
New digital technology has long proved a headache for the people who protect presidents or high-profile politicians.
Even Donald Trump’s Twitter account was accessed by a hacker by guessing his password.
Sources: 100 PERCENT FED UP, DAILY MAIL, BUZZ FEED NEWS