Many of the stories seem to belong to local and national political and national politicians who range from the American representative Dan Crenshaw from Texas to a former mayor of Deltona, Florida, as well as risk capitalists, entrepreneurs of the defense industry and executives such as Christian Brose, the president of the Anduril giant defense technology. (The Office of Crenshaw and Anduril did not respond to comments requests).
One of the most notable seems to belong to Wiles, one of Trump’s most reliable political advisors. The list of friends of 182 people from that account includes accounts that share the names of influential figures such as Pam Bondi, the United States Attorney and Hope Hicks, the former Communications Director of the White House of Trump.
While none of the venmo transactions for the account listed for Waltz, Wiles or Barrett were publicly visible, it seems that none of them had chosen not to share their contact list, allowing their friends lists to remain visible to the public. After britcommerce contacted the White House to comment, both Waltz and Wiles seemed to change their venmo privacy settings to hide their friends lists.
Venmo spokeswoman Erin Mackey said in a statement: “We take the privacy of our clients seriously, so we allow customers to choose their venmo privacy settings for both their individual payments and for their lists of friends, and we make it incredibly simple that customers make these private if they choose to do it.” The comment is almost identical to the only one that Venmo provided britcommerce in response to a 2024 story about Vice President JD Vance.
Last July, britcommerce reported that Vance had left his venmo account public, exposing a network of connections with the architects of the 2025 project, officials of the Department of Justice, Yale Law classmates and figures from the media of the extreme right. (While it was not reported at that time, britcommerce analysis of that publicos public account, and the networks of his quoted friends, discovered that Michael Waltz Venmo’s account appeared on the extended network of Vance, composed of friends and friends of friends). According to the Atlantic, Vance was also an active participant in the signal chat in the signal chat, when questioned if the military operation planned in Yemen is aligned with the president.
When Michael Waltz’s account was configured in 2017, the application would show a notice that allows users to synchronize their telephone contacts, britcommerceally populating their list of friends with any person in their address notebook that already uses the platform. Defenders of privacy, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, criticized This design, arguing that it exposes users to unnecessary risks by making public connections publicly. It was not until Buzzfeed News revealed in 2021 that then President Joe Biden was easily found in the application that Venmo, owned by PayPal, added the option to hide friends lists. But that configuration remains opted. According to your privacy policyUnless users proactively change their privacy settings, their network remains visible to anyone.
Mixed with high profile names connected to the apparent Vals Avemo account there are a number of accounts that seem to belong to common people, such as several doctors, real estate agents and a tailor. These are the types of low level connections that, according to experts, spies seek basic information: a relationship with a medical specialist could expose that a person is being treated by a disease that has not been made public, as well as patterns, pressure points or a way of entering. Experts call them “soft objectives”: people who have access but are not protected.