Many accounts appear to belong to local and national politicians and political agents, from Dan Crenshaw, the U.S. representative to the former mayor of Deltona, Florida, as well as venture capitalists, defense industry entrepreneurs, and executives like President Christian Brose, the defense technology giant. (Crenshaw’s office and Anduril did not respond to requests for comment.)
Most famous is one of Trump’s most trusted political advisers, Wells. The account’s 182-person friend list includes sharing the names of influential figures such as U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and former Trump’s White House communications director Hope Hicks.
Although Venmo transactions on accounts listed by waltz, Wells or Barrett are not publicly visible, it appears that none of them opt out of their contact list, allowing their friend list to remain visible to the public. After connecting with the White House for comment, both Waltz and Wells seem to have changed their Venmo privacy settings to hide their friend list.
“We take our customers’ privacy seriously, which is why we let customers choose their privacy settings on Venmo to get their personal payments and friends lists, and we can make it very simple for customers to privately privatize customers,” Venmo spokesman Erin Mackey said in a statement. The review is almost the same as Venmo offers a story about 2024 about incumbent President JD Vance’s Venmo.
Last July, Wired reported that Vance had made his Venmo account public, revealing a network of connections with 2025 architects, Justice Department officials, Yale law classmates and far-right media figures. (With no reports at the time, Wired’s analysis of public venmo accounts and the network of his friends – Michael Waltz Venmo accounts appeared on Vance’s extended network, including friends and friends in the Atlantic.) According to Friends and Friends in the Atlantic.
When the Michael Waltz account was set up in 2017, the app will display a prompt that allows users to sync their phone contacts and automatically populate their friend list with anyone in the address book that already uses the platform. Privacy advocates, including the Electronic Border Foundation, criticized the design, saying it puts users at unnecessary risks by making them publicly socially connected by default. Until BuzzFeed News revealed in 2021 that then-President Joe Biden could easily find the Venmo owned by PayPal in the app, adding that option to hide the friend list. However, this setting is still opted in. Under its privacy policy, anyone’s network is still visible unless the user proactively changes their privacy settings.
Mixed with the high-profile names associated with the obvious Waltz Venmo account, there are many accounts that belong to the average person, such as several doctors, real estate agents and tailors. Experts say these are low-level connections for spies to find basic information – relationships with medical experts can be exposed to treatments for undisclosed diseases, such as patterns, stress points, or a way. Experts call them “soft targets”: people who are not protected.
