Bot Tweeted Names And Photos Of Venmo Users Who Bought Drugs (mercurynews.com)

Since Venmo's transactions are "public" by default and broadcast on Venmo's API, a Python programmer decided to publicize a few of them, reports the Mercury News: The creator of the bot named "Who's buying drugs on Venmo" under the Twitter handle @venmodrugs says he wanted users to consider their privacy settings before using Venmo. The bot finds Venmo transactions that include words such as heroin, marijuana, cocaine, meth, speed or emojis that denote drugs and tweets the transaction with the names of the sender and receiver and the sender's photo, if there is one... "I wanted to demonstrate how much data Venmo was making publicly available with their open API and their public by default settings and encourage people to consider their privacy settings," Joel Guerra, the creator of the bot, told Motherboard, a technology news outlet run by Vice.
He shut the bot after 24 hours, according to a Medium essay titled "Why I blasted your 'drug' deals on Twitter": I chose drugs, sex and alcohol keywords as the trigger for the bot because because they were funny and shocking. I removed the last names of users because I didn't want to actually contribute to the problem of lack of privacy... I braced myself for backlash but the response was overwhelmingly positive. People understood my point and I had sparked a lot of discussion about online privacy and the need for users to do a better job of understanding the terms of software they were using -- and a lot of discussion about how companies need to do a better job of informing customers how their data was being used...

After about 24 hours of tweeting everyone's drug laden Venmo transactions I shut down the bot (Python script!!) and deleted all the tweets. I had successfully made my point and gotten more attention than I had imagined possible. Thousands of people were reading tweets and articles about the bot and discussing data privacy. I saw no further value in tweeting out anyone's personal transactions anymore. However, all I ever did was format the data and automate a Twitter account -- the data is still readily available.
His closure of the bot drew some interesting reactions on Twitter.

"booooooooo. I was so entertained by this."

"I remember I had a dealer take my phone and set venmo to private lol."

"we're looking to add a Python developer to our team and I think you'd be a good fit."

Comments

I must be old

[Anonymous Coward]

I must be old because I had never heard of venmo until now. Fucking mellinials.

Re:I must be old

[coolsnowmen]

Old people don't need venmo in general.

- Young people rarely have enough denominations of cash on them (prefer credit cards). To pay anyone back exactly.

- Young people don't have the money just to 'buy everyone dinner', or "I'll get you next time". So they split the bill. But not all restaurants or hotels etc make that easy. So Venmo did. Also, at one point in time Paypal didn't make it as easy as it does now (probably because of competition from venmo)

Re:I must be old

[Scarletdown]

I must be old because I had never heard of venmo until now. Fucking mellinials.

So do we put you down in favor of fucking millenials or against fucking millenials? :p

Sounds like this Joel Guerra is just another little shitlord who jizzes himself at the idea of disrupting anything he can get his Cheeto dust encrusted hands on.

Re:I must be old

[CaptainDork]

I'm 72 years old and when God said, "Let there be light." I threw the fucking switch.

That was the precursor to Venmo.

Fucking Luddite.

Re:I must be old

[b0s0z0ku]

Easy to split bills exactly in cash as well -- restaurants are ecstatic to make change if they know they'll be paid in cash :D

Re:I must be old

[Cederic]

not all restaurants or hotels etc make that easy

Sure they do. They provide a bill for X, you know Y people ate/stayed, you divide X by Y and just fucking get on with life.

In my experience the person eating the expensive steak voluntarily chucks a little extra in anyway, usually before the rest even find out the bill's total.

Re: I must be old

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the switch failed and God said, "what's plan B?" And you reply, "God, plan B is plan A".

Re:I must be old

[jareth-0205]

not all restaurants or hotels etc make that easy

Sure they do. They provide a bill for X, you know Y people ate/stayed, you divide X by Y and just fucking get on with life.

In my experience the person eating the expensive steak voluntarily chucks a little extra in anyway, usually before the rest even find out the bill's total.

Sure - when you have cash to spare the rough split is fine. When you're on a tight budget and are picking from the menu partly based on price, but would still like to go out with friends, not so much. Surely you've had a time in your life when you didn't have much cash to spend, and this sort of thing was a stress? Or have you always been wealthy?

Re:I must be old

[Cederic]

When I couldn't afford to eat out, I didn't eat out.

Then again my friends know who's not earning, who just had a snack and not three courses, who drank all the wine. We adjust, we don't need to discuss it, we don't dive through each item on the receipt.

We stop going out with people that do. Life's too short, fucking get on with it.

Re:I must be old

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure they do. They provide a bill for X, you know Y people ate/stayed, you divide X by Y and just fucking get on with life.

lol you've never been around cheapskates. For weeks later I had to listen to one guy complaining about how somebody else had one more beer than he did.

Re:I must be old

[jareth-0205]

We stop going out with people that do. Life's too short, fucking get on with it.

You know what I think life's too short for? Cutting people out of parts of your life because you can't flex for their financial needs. A couple of minutes faffing with the bill in a way you don't like, is more important to you to avoid than their entire presence. I for one don't shun people due to fucking trivialities. God knows what you do to people when you have a disagreement that actually matters.

Re:I must be old

[Cederic]

Going through a receipt line item by line item has fuck all to do with financial needs and everything to do with being an obnoxious twat.

We resolve our differences because we don't have to deal with obnoxious twats.

Re:I must be old

[Anonymous Coward]

Millenials have tried been prepped by the media to do everything different than their parents or everyone before them, even the things that worked out well over centuries.

Re:I must be old

[Anonymous Coward]

In college my friends and I went out for pizza. When the bill came, we all tossed out money. Whole dollar amounts. On friend says, "Wait, wait, wait. We have to figure this out." So we all waited while he ran down the check line by line. In the end we had all put out money within less that $.25 of the right amount including tip. Obviously this is mostly dumb luck as we only put out paper bills, but that one friend never argued for going over the check line by line ever again. Then again, now, decades later, if I want to pay I have to trick him.

Re:I must be old

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the opposite reaction to bill-sharing. When you have a "friend" that knows he's only paying for the average and orders steak, wine, and dessert, when you're being conservative with your money, it's pretty annoying. Also, when I want to spend extra to get my own appetizer and fancy drink without my friends getting pissed, I order on a separate check. Or I use an app that calculates the individual bill after we ordered but BEFORE the food and bill arrives, so everyone's on the same page. It's just easier not to deal with everyone's butthurt. If you think averaging is easier and not dealing with feelings is better, you're being the jerk.

This is why they want to get rid of cash.

[Anonymous Coward]

So they can track you like this. Even "private" currencies like Monero will be cracked eventually.

Re:This is why they want to get rid of cash.

[Highdude702]

Theres no way to "crack" monero. Sure you can get an idea maybe of where the coins went, but with mixins its basically impossible to trace shit. GL with a blockchain explorer.

Re:This is why they want to get rid of cash.

[Rockoon]

Meanwhile scientists have gotten a nice foothold into quantum computing. That shits coming. First it will be deep pockets that get it. They may not let anyone else ever get it.

Re:This is why they want to get rid of cash.

[Highdude702]

You're not understanding what I'm saying. Transactions are obfuscated by default, and you choose how many "mixins" you want to use, meaning how many other transactions to put into yours. There is nothing to crack, therefor a quantum computer is worthless, unless you want to make a miner out of it. I would love to have a quantum miner.

Re:This is why they want to get rid of cash.

[smallfries]

That’s quite a naive assumption. There are no proofs that it is hard to unscramble. There was a paper last year showing it is not as hard as it should be.

Re:This is why they want to get rid of cash.

[CaptainDork]

You don't understand quantum computing.

I do.

Consider CaptainDork's 3rd corollary: "For every motherfucker out there with a goddam computer, there's another motherfucker out there with a goddam computer."

We're all getting quantum computers and, as it is today, "All your base are belong to us."

Re: This is why they want to get rid of cash.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you refer to yourself in third person, you're the motherfucker.

Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[jellomizer]

In short if there is demand for a product there will be a market for it. You can try to setup social rules or actual laws, but just as long people want it, it will be available.

However if such a product/service is Black Market, or just Taboo for that culture, there rarely is a formal entry to entry. It isn't like a Drug dealer will need at least 2 years of business school, or a Sex Worker will need an art degree, or places that offer formal training... So the reason why a lot of these people get caught is because they don't know what they are doing. So Venmo is an easy way to send them money, they will take it. Not realizing how insecure it is. Because they didn't think on how insecure it is, and neither does the consumer (even for more normal purchases) realize how publicly displaying the purchases is risky.

Now Black Market and even Taboo markets have the biggest problem of not being able to fight against bad service or products. You as a consumer isn't willing to sue Venmo because it posted your purchases of an Illegal or Embarrassing item, because all it will do is bring more attention to themselves. Sure some people are willing to take the Embarrassment of a Taboo item, just to get their point across, but for Black Market stuff your risking punishment as well, for getting ripped off.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[inking]

TL;DR: Criminals are by and large compete and utter idiots. So are many of their customers.

This bot post has just saved you a minute of reading. Praise Jobs.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[jellomizer]

The largest Black Market in New York State isn't drugs, but unpasteurized milk. You can drive across Upstate NY and find signs saying Raw Milk this way. I say this because calling people dealing in the Black Market Criminals is a harsh statement. It is the sale of anything that isn't allowed to be sold in the area.

A low bar of entry makes it easier for stupid people to get into it. However they are also a lot of extremely smart people in the Black Market too, which is why the "War on Drugs" is so hard to fight, Because you are fighting Market Demand and Creative individuals who work all the time to work around the system, yet make themselves known to actually sell to people.

Black Market is a very inconsistent area. You can get top notch quality or crap that will kill you. Because for that Raw Milk the producer can make sure the Cows are in wonderful living conditions, clean happy and healthy. Or sleeping in their own waste, eating garbage food.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[inking]

It is not a harsh statement. People selling things that aren’t allowed to be sold are criminals. Extremely smart people can make a killing without living under a constant fear of having to spend several decades of their life in prison.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

The largest Black Market in New York State is ... unpasteurized milk.
Really? Sounds like an extraordinary claim - we may need some extraordinary evidence.

You can drive across Upstate NY and find signs saying Raw Milk this way.
Signs? That's the evidence? What you've really found is a black market that is slightly more visible than other black markets. That's going to be more of a result of enforcement than the size of the market. What you've really found here is the largest black market that officials aren't actively pursuing.
I'll bet that drugs and reduced-tax cigarettes are much, much larger markets. They just don't have signs.

Re: Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

Criminals are by and large compete and utter idiots. So are many of their customers.

In other words, the people who are too stupid or mentally unstable for a regular job end up as criminals. Which is why unemployment benefits and free mental health care benefits all of us: it reduces our chances of getting robbed by a desperate idiot or lunatic.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

How pasteurized is typical milk in new york? (I'm from elsewhere in the world, getting fresh isn't a legal issue here.)

The main reason for pasteurization isn't to kill of unhealthy stuff but to make milk last longer. Lowest level pasteurization makes it last about a week, taste isn't as original as direct-from-cow but doesn't have any of the industrial taste of higher processed variatns (this is my preferred variant).
These days most milk is available as "ESL" (extended shelf life) here, making it last for about 3 weeks. Its either heated to longer or to a higher temperature, adding a somewhat disgusting taste, or filtered to remove those bacteria that make milk go bad (the latter is OK'ish taste-wise).
And then there's of course "milk" that doesn't even need cooling. It might be useful to cool down coffee or something, but otherwise it isn't really fit for human consumption.

So what is it that is typicall available, that drives people to get straight-from-cow milk (which only really works with daily delivery network, which is hard enough to set up without legal restrictions, but sounds pretty impossible to get done when outlawed)?

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[jittles]

TL;DR: Criminals are by and large compete and utter idiots. So are many of their customers. This bot post has just saved you a minute of reading. Praise Jobs.

You may want to reconsider that statement. Yes there are plenty of dumb criminals but there are also plenty of people who think it is funny to put silly things in Venmo. It's no different that someone putting "Sensual Massage" in the memo field of a check they write to their roommate, except that nobody ever looks at the memo field on a check. Most of those are probably jokes. Unless people are buying these drugs by mail why would they use Venmo instead of cold hard cash? And we all know that people prefer cryptocoins for their online drug purchases

Re: Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take your raw milk fascistic hate elsewhere!

Slashdot is a pro-science pro-pasteurization community.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[inking]

I don’t think it is a very productive exercise to ask “why” in most cases involving stupidy relating to use of electronics. I am certain anyone who has ever been in corporate cyber security will eagerly confirm this statement. Mind you, we are talking about people with degrees that attended security policy orientations and still manage to send confidential data over unsecured channels. Now imagine the guy whose main skill is selling meth in a night club. I would not be surprised if he kept a log of his transactions on his Facebook wall or something.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Archangel Michael]

People selling things that aren’t allowed to be sold are criminals.

I would suggest to you that your view is simplistic to say the least, and doesn't reflect reality. There are plenty of things that are now illegal, that once were legal. And things that were once illegal that are currently legal, and a few things that were once legal, then made illegal, but are legal again. Alcohol is a great example.

Drinking alcohol doesn't make one a criminal either before, during or after prohibition. Just because there is a law doesn't mean it is a good one. And thus, we have the ability to judge not only the facts of a case, but also the law (jury nullification). This is the last refuge of liberty.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The largest Black Market in New York State isn't drugs, but unpasteurized milk. You can drive across Upstate NY...

... and find 1/3 the population of the state. While it may be spread over a greater physical area, the actual population is pretty small. Hence, unless raw milk is twice as popular as drugs, it's still a smaller market. (Where we're just talking about units consumed. To say nothing of raw milk being cheap compared to, say, cocaine.)

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[BenFranske]

Actually that's exactly what criminal means. We can (and should) absolutely have a debate about what things should be unlawful today and be continually updating laws. Make no mistake though that if something is unlawful when you do it you are a criminal. That's the definition of criminal.

Yes, that means that everyone who speeds is a criminal. Yes, that means that people who drank (well actually only people who produced, sold, or transported intoxicating liquors) during the prohibition era were criminals. There are many examples of things which should not be, or are not anymore, unlawful but it is clearly the case that people who did those things while they were unlawful are in fact criminals. Yes, almost everyone is a criminal because we have a lot of laws on the books.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[BenFranske]

In the US almost all milk is of the 'low level' pasteurized variety you mentioned this means temperatures of at least 161 F for not less than 15 seconds, followed by rapid cooling. Very little US milk is ultra-pasteurized. It's just trendy right now in the US for some people to drink raw milk. I wouldn't say that it's especially popular, but there's definitely a community of people who seek it out, trade places to buy it, etc.

I drink a lot of milk, enough that I still have home delivery which is very rare in the US these days. My experience, and a key reason I pay extra for home delivery, is that the taste of milk had much more to do with freshness than anything else. The fresher the better.

Re: Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

Itâ(TM)s legal in ny for farms to sell unpasteurized milk.

Anyway, so what? Thereâ(TM)s reasons for unpasteurized milk to be legally restricted (it kills a few toddlers a year).

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

huh? are you measuring the "largest black market" by "number of billboards"? there is no possible way that unlawful unpasteurized milk, in terms of dollar value, is a larger market than coke and weed in NY.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[jittles]

I don’t think it is a very productive exercise to ask “why” in most cases involving stupidy relating to use of electronics. I am certain anyone who has ever been in corporate cyber security will eagerly confirm this statement. Mind you, we are talking about people with degrees that attended security policy orientations and still manage to send confidential data over unsecured channels. Now imagine the guy whose main skill is selling meth in a night club. I would not be surprised if he kept a log of his transactions on his Facebook wall or something.

But in this case it is very productive to ask why someone would add an electronic layer to a cash business. There's no justification for it, and a great way to get busted by the IRS or whatever tax agency rules your country. So I have to ask why would that night club meth dealer accept VenMo? If one buyer doesn't have the cash, the next will. And anyone who goes to a night club to buy drugs always has cash.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[b0s0z0ku]

Raw milk is perfectly legal in NY State as long as the producer is licensed. It just can't be sold across state lines.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[CaptainDork]

In short: I agree with you, particularly on a point that is dear to my research.

They best way to stop behaviour deemed undesirable is to remove the desire.

The war on drugs: Stop addiction.

Influx of undocumented humans: Make America a shot hole country.

Sex trafficking, toy sales, pornography, workers, etc.: Make people unhorny.

Gun control: Make ownership unnecessary.

The solid solution to many issues is on the demand side.

Make the demand go away, and the problem is solved.

The only way to win is not to play.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are trying to make the point that buying and selling on the black market is not immoral. However you keep saying it is not criminal. It absolutely is criminal. Legality and morality are often not the same thing.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

People selling things that aren’t allowed to be sold are criminals.

I would suggest to you that your view is simplistic to say the least, and doesn't reflect reality. There are plenty of things that are now illegal, that once were legal. And things that were once illegal that are currently legal, and a few things that were once legal, then made illegal, but are legal again. Alcohol is a great example.

Drinking alcohol doesn't make one a criminal either before, during or after prohibition. Just because there is a law doesn't mean it is a good one. And thus, we have the ability to judge not only the facts of a case, but also the law (jury nullification). This is the last refuge of liberty.

His view is simplistic because the answer is simplistic. If you sell ANYTHING that is illegal (milk, pot, guns, whatever) you are a criminal. Simple as that. The only debate that can be remotely rational on this subject is whether criminal is a harsh word or a bad thing. Just because you disagree with a law does not give you the right to redefine a word with a very common and accepted definition.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

Being "criminal" and being "evil" are two completely different things.

Sometimes they overlap. That is entirely coincidental.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[cascadingstylesheet]

because calling people dealing in the Black Market Criminals is a harsh statement. It is the sale of anything that isn't allowed to be sold in the area.

Allowed to be sold ... by laws. Which, if you break, you are a criminal.

So, literally black market criminals.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[TheMeuge]

So in short he want to make people not human.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[CaptainDork]

Exactly.

Prohibition is the template for the answer: There is none.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like the politicians in NY who banned raw milk get a free pass. At the least, they could have raw milk consumers register in a central database and go through a background check, or perhaps allow for medicinal use. Aren't those the progressive ways?

Re: Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as they're not serving it to children. But they are.

I don't particularly care if you can buy raw milk, myself, so long as you're convicted for manslaughter when the shit hits the fan.

Re: Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

Make a killing?

I'm sure you meant "make a really lucrative living" because taking your comment literally, makes your comment nonsense, especially in this context. Just saying.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[jellomizer]

There are other ways to lower demand.
However these require a lot of work that we just don’t have the leadership to manage.

For Drugs you need to find out why someone starts in the beginning. There could be thousands of different reasons. The issue is to find people who would be tempted and offer alternatives.

It isn’t easy it isn’t cheap and it would be messy. But if it is really considered a problem then they are solution but it is going to be hard.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Archangel Michael]

No. That's NOT what I am saying. I'm saying that just because something is illegal doesn't make it "wrong". Is selling Lemonade on the corner wrong? We did that a lot when I was a kid 50 years ago. Yet that is illegal enough that police are called (code enforcement) and it is stopped.

Or how about Immigration?

Or how about alcohol?

Or how about smoking?

Or how about Prostitution?

Or .....

I'm arguing for a libertarian viewpoint, which is apart from the current Nanny State proponents of protecting everyone from everything, including providing "safe spaces" for people easily offended.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

Societal norms and values do change over time. Today's political circus would look tame to what was going on in the1920's. Alcohol was probably the second rung in the human evolution ladder right after fire. But some how the government had enough support to actually ban alcohol. And it took a Constitutional amendment to straighten out the entire mess.

Re: Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

AD&D had it. Lawful...chaotic. good...evil.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[tlhIngan]

It's just trendy right now in the US for some people to drink raw milk. I wouldn't say that it's especially popular, but there's definitely a community of people who seek it out, trade places to buy it, etc.

It's just a food trend - by people who thing "raw" is better. There's a good reason we pasteurize milk - there can be a lot of nasty bugs in them. Not because it was in the milk, but because of the bugs on the surfaces around the udders. (The udders are exposed to dirt and everything, and have to be cleaned before being hooked up to the milking machine where the milk and the udders may come in contact. The old style of milking was slightly cleaner since the milk just sprayed into a bucket far away.

And what's trendy among the "raw" crowd is "raw water" - water that hasn't gone through the water treatment plant. (You know, one of the few things in human history that greatly improved human health). About the only good thing is people will find out pretty rapidly why we have water treatment plants in the first place.

Of course, there is a good reason why humans cook food - yes, you lose nutrients, but cooking tends to make nutrients more bio-available and easier for the body to process and acquire.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[f3rret]

Add Haloperidol to the water supply, gonna take right care of al those things.
Maybe a bit of Diazepam.

Re: Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's DUH LAW!?!!!1!!11!!!!!!

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with "right" and "wrong" is that it's different for everybody. Every criminal says they're just doing what is right to them. Every person who exercises their vote opposite the way you'd vote is doing something "wrong" in your opinion.

What behavior gets you a fine or a stay in prison gets decided by laws that our predecessors had a hand in creating, that we get to vote on maintaining occasionally. That is what is currently criminal. If you don't like it, you have to spend some of your time to effect change.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[inking]

Actually, criminals are usually individuals falling under the penal code, whereas speeding typically falls under ordinances or the transportation code. Tax evasion and selling prohibited goods is almost universally treated by the penal code and is thus criminal.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[BenFranske]

Agreed by (at least some) legal definitions, but I was working more from a dictionary definition which is usually anyone committing a crime which is anything unlawful by dictionary definition.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[inking]

I absolutely agree with you on the gist of it.

Re:Black Market and Taboo Industries.

[Archangel Michael]

You are correct. Did you vote for the people that created the drug laws? My guess, that unless you're much older than I am, you didn't. I surely didn't vote, the beginnings of those drug laws predates my birth, and I'm an old greybeard that I used to make fun of.

I used to smoke weed .. a lot. I don't smoke now. My views haven't changed because of my personal choice. They have only solidified. Crimes should be relegated to actual harm to others. Murder, theft, robbery, rape ... All easily fall into this gap. The most utilitarian purpose of government is to SECURE the rights of the citizenry, not control them.

True Liberty is messy.

NetBSD is D E A D

[Anonymous Coward]

The more you think about it, the more you realize that NetBSD is D E A D.

Black Market Bombs and Taboo Touches.

[Anonymous Coward]

In short if there is demand for a product there will be a market for it. You can try to setup social rules or actual laws, but just as long people want it, it will be available.

Everyone wants THE BOMB. Where can they pick one up? Asking for a friend.

Re:Black Market Bombs and Taboo Touches.

[retchdog]

venmo me, but just call it "scientific equipment".

Re:Black Market Bombs and Taboo Touches.

[Scarletdown]

In short if there is demand for a product there will be a market for it. You can try to setup social rules or actual laws, but just as long people want it, it will be available.

Everyone wants THE BOMB. Where can they pick one up? Asking for a friend.

Many Quickie Marts carry them, with the other frozen nukable stuff. Then again, I don't think I could get myself to eat a burrito called The Bomb. You know that has to be a warning of near future "problems".

Black Market Lemmings and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

Best way to solve Black Market is to get Darwin involved. Let people have whatever they want in any quantity they want. Invariably they'll end up destroying themselves, their loved ones, friends, complete strangers. The one's left are the one's you want to build a viable society on. People who understand restraint is part of a viable society, and it's OK to say NO without the guilt trip, peer pressure is.

Re:Black Market Lemmings and Taboo Industries.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumb idea. Or are you okay with junkies in your neighbourhood playing in the park with your kids? 'Cause that's the "complete strangers" that they'll end up destroying.

I deleted my account yesterday, different reason

[Applehu Akbar]

I have had occasion to send money to two relatives who are "unbanked," and because I could only talk one of them into using Square Cash, I had to install Venmo. Yesterday Venmo emailed its users to say they are getting out of the personal payments business, so I saw that as good reason to delete my long-inactive account.

Emojis That Denote Drugs?

[Anonymous Coward]

or emojis that denote drugs

Are there actually emojis that denote drugs, or are these things like, say, a random leaf emoji that some people happen to use to refer to drugs? If the latter, I wonder how many false positives they picked up and if anyone is going to care that they are false positives or if those people are now falsely branded for life as being drug users.

Though I suppose false positives among the text searches is also possible.

Transactions public by default?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there anyone who actually thought that making transactions public was a good idea? Maybe it's a millennial thing and I wouldn't understand.

Re:Transactions public by default?

[sunking2]

The vast majority of users could not care less who sees they split a pizza with someone.

Re:Transactions public by default?

[Scarletdown]

Split it? I thought it was always the "fastest" one to reach for the wallet pays. I get more free pizza that way (Surprised J. Wellington Wimpy never used that line). :)

Re:Transactions public by default?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, here we are commenting on a story about people getting upset that their public payments are public. I think users don't care up until the point is driven into their thick skulls.

Vicemo

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess this guys is better at marketing because vicemo has been around for a while publishing the same info.

you trusted some thing paypal related???Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

you trusted some thing paypal related???

Are you a bunch of idiots?

I knew there are idiots in the world but wow just fucking wow...

How about

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's that attention you ordered

and how much did the DEA pay for them to snitch?

[Joe_Dragon]

and how much did the DEA pay for them to snitch?

What a compelte asshole

[aepervius]

He could have used another way to show the vulnerability without having people named and shamed. But nooooo. let us name and shame. Anti social idiot.

Re:What a compelte asshole

[Anonymous Coward]

If he didn't do it, someone else would have. It doesn't make sense for this kind of data to be made public at all, especially by default

Re:What a compelte asshole

[Anonymous Coward]

He could have used another way to show the vulnerability without having people named and shamed. But nooooo. let us name and shame. Anti social idiot.

You know, if people are stupid enough to use an app which is public by default to conduct drug transactions, those people are the idiots.

This guy took public information from the platform, and just put it into the daylight.

I'm afraid I have no sympathy for anybody who is dumb enough to do this and mark transactions for the actual drugs they're buying in something which is public.

If he could do it, so could law enforcement. Not knowing the technology is making this shit public is their own fault.

Try this in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Would be nice if they did this in Europe. 4% of the parent company's (PayPal) global revenues would be a nice penalty.

CHEATING MUST STOP

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