The president’s Venmo account

“We found Joe Biden’s secret Venmo account,” said Ryan Mac in BuzzFeedNews .com. Following “a passing mention in The New York Times that the president had sent his grandchildren money on Venmo,” the popular peer-to-peer payments app, it took us less than 10 minutes to find Biden’s account “using only a combination of the app’s built-in search tool and public friends feature.” The president had made his transactions private, overriding Venmo’s default settings. However, there is no way to make Venmo’s friend lists private, making Biden’s identity easily verifiable through “the people he was connected to, including an account that appeared to be for his wife, Jill Biden.” At least one person seems to have used Venmo’s public directory to ask for money from Biden family members. $150,000; $112,500 for heads of household; and $75,000 for all other taxpayers. The payments were passed as part of the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package in March. It marks the first time that such payments, “normally given annually as tax refunds, will be distributed monthly.” Most families will get the benefits by direct deposit into their bank accounts.