Even more Venmo accounts associated with Trump officers in the Signal Group Chat

Venmo did not immediately answer a comment on the request from WIRED. In an explanation that Wired has given to questions about the Waltz and Wiles accounts, spokesman Erin Macke said: “We take the privacy of our customers seriously, which is why we have the customers select their data protection settings on Venmo, who make lists for both their individual payments and friends – and we make it incredibly easy to make this private if they decide.”

“In my view, everyone as a veteran is the right to use the applications and services that they think is necessary to live their life,” says Tara Lemieux, 35-year-old veteran of the US secret of the U.S., including the national security authority, the department for home protection and supporting agencies. “This means that if you publish something in these applications of third-party providers and do not understand how this information can be shared or exploited, take a risk for our country in and that is not acceptable.”

For Lemieux, while public transactions on Venmo appear harmless, foreign intelligence agencies – especially signals of intelligence agencies – see patterns: who pays who, how often and when. “Say you make payments to your children – now you have a lever point. If someone is out there to aim at it, you can use this information and you are afraid that you are anxious for the safety of your children,” says Lemieux.

“The speed of the digital world has exceeded our ability to have it under control,” she adds. “If you have all this information out there – how to the devil will you put the toothpaste back in the tube?”

Mike Yeagley, a specialist in commercial data and its security risks, has advised the US Department of Defense for over 15 years, as both allies and opponents use what he calls “digital exhaust”, the apparently secular details -social connections, service transactions and metadata trails -varnish in everyday apps. “At the highest level of our national security leadership, regardless of the administration, there must be an awareness of our data and what we can project that can be found,” he says.

“What is the risk of someone at the Venmo cabinet level to pay their personal trainer? It doesn’t look like a lot on the surface,” says Yeagley. “But now I know who this trainer is – or the gardener or whoever – and suddenly I have expanded my ability to identify the people to identify these civil servants.”

Yaeagley adds that “our opponents in their data acquisition are demanding and carnivorous”, which means that “only the slightest day of daylight is of interest to someone. You will use this data point. You will build it out of it.”

According to Venmo, users can upload telephone contacts to the app with the “Contact Synchronization” function so that you can find people you know. If these exposed Venmo accounts were set up -everything before 2020 -the app indicated a prompt with which users can synchronize their telephone contacts and automatically colonize their friends list with each in their address book that already uses the platform. According to Venmo, this functionality was outdated more than two years ago. Today, contact synchronization no longer produces connections. To add someone as a friend, users have to search for him, send an inquiry and have them accepted.

According to Venmo’s data protection guidelines, if users do not change your data protection settings proactively, your network remains no visible to anyone. This means that even if a user sets his account on private companies, his friendlist remains visible, unless he takes an additional step. After publication, the hiding places of your connections require navigating Settings > Privacy > Friends list and selection Private.

Stephen Lurie contributed to the reporting.