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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."
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."
I must be old because I had never heard of venmo until now. Fucking mellinials.
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
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.
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