Spending habits of 50 members of Congress and 30 officials in President Donald Trump's administration are on display in publicly accessible Venmo accounts, according to a report Tuesday.
NOTUS reporter Mark Alfred sifted through the accounts and the associated lists of contacts, uncovering telling things about U.S. lawmakers.
Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR), for example, "has a penchant for making bets on major golf championships — or, as he sometimes refers to his losing picks, 'donations,'" wrote Alfred.
He labeled one as “Masters 21 Donation,” while another was a “US Open Championship contribution,” and a month later, “Donation for poor Open picks."
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Venmo by default makes all transactions, and descriptions of what they're for, public, though they can be set to private.
“Besides the privacy violation that may lead to embarrassing or inappropriate details of your life and associates, one of the risks is that adversaries might target your contacts,” cybersecurity researcher Katie Moussouris told the site. “If they compromise a close contact, they are more likely to be successful sending a convincing phishing message that appears to be from that person.”
Some officials have hundreds of friends "dating back years," the report said. Some are innocent payments like "puzzles" and "snow removal." Others give a glimpse into the officials' relationships, such as Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH), who paid his sister for "Some concert I didn't even go to."
Alfred found some payments that expose personal information, like a payment to a woman for "house cleaning" in 2023 by Rep. Jennifer Kiggans (R-FL). It listed her home address in the description.
Application security specialist Bill Sempf told NOTUS that he isn't surprised by the large portion of information publicly available because, while they may be powerful people in politics, "that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re particularly internet savvy."
While previous reports revealed Venmo accounts owned by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance, it didn't inspire other White House staff to make sure their accounts were private, the report said.
Among the White House staff, press secretary Karoline Leavitt, deputy chief of staff James Blair, staff secretary Will Scharf and New Jersey U.S. Attorney Alina Habba all have public Venmo accounts that show their friends list.
"The fact that so many senior White House officials continue to showcase what is effectively a snapshot of their contacts list on a public account is all the more notable in the wake of the administration’s Signal-gate fiasco last month," wrote Alfred.
An Atlantic reporter was inadvertently added to a chat on the encrypted app Signal that included top Trump administration officials discussing information about military strikes. The magazine then published the contents of the chats after the Trump administration insisted that the information was not classified.
