US President Joe Biden and US First Lady Jill Biden pose with their family in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the “Celebrating America” event at the Lincoln Memorial after his inauguration as the 46th President of the United States in Washington, DC, January 20, 2021. (Photo by JOSHUA ROBERTS / POOL / AFP) (Photo by JOSHUA ROBERTS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
A team of BuzzFeed reporters claims it found President Joe Biden’s “secret Venmo” account after just 10 minutes of looking, and says that fact alone presents a “major privacy concern for everyone” who uses Venmo.
“On Friday, following a passing mention in the New York Times that the president had sent his grandchildren money on Venmo, BuzzFeed News searched for the president’s account using only a combination of the app’s built-in search tool and public friends feature,” the report said. “In the process, BuzzFeed News found nearly a dozen Biden family members and mapped out a social web that encompasses not only the first family, but a wide network of people around them, including the president
“The president’s transactions are not public, and BuzzFeed News is not identifying the usernames for the accounts mentioned in this story due to national security concerns,” the report added.
BuzzFeed reported that since it reached out to the White House for the story, all the friends on Biden’s Venmo account had been removed.
As the BuzzFeed story notes, this isn’t the first time a government official’s Venmo account has been “easily discovered through publicly available information.” In April, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and his friend, former tax collector (and admitted sex trafficker) Joel Greenberg reportedly used the app to pay three young women for “tuition” and “school,” although unlike Biden, the Venmo accounts of Gaetz and Greenberg appeared to be public.
BuzzFeed pointed out that the account of former President Donald Trump‘s daughter Tiffany Trump has been found, and in 2017, then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer‘s account was also found, much to the delight of trolls and pranksters.
This also isn’t the first time Biden’s personal actions have been reported as a possible security risk. In January, the New York Times reported that Biden’s Peloton bike, which has a built-in camera and microphone, could potentially expose the president to privacy and security breaches.