Data Leakage

In Kyle’s API-security notes, “data leakage” is the distinction that matters in the Venmo case: in 2020 roughly 200 million Venmo transactions were scraped by querying its public API, exposing user information. The transcript debated whether this even counted as a breach and landed on data leakage as the right frame — “it was just data leakage at the time, not an official hack… There wasn’t someone in my network… exfiltrating it out. It was just a way to query and get this information from us.” The point of the distinction is that securing the front-end / GUI does nothing if the underlying API interface remains openly queryable — a core argument for API Security as a category and for vendors like Salt Security.

Context: “Data leakage” generally describes sensitive data becoming accessible through unintended channels — here, an exposed API endpoint — rather than through an active intrusion or exfiltration by an attacker inside the network.

Where this appears

• Venmo — the API-scrape case study used to illustrate data leakage versus an official breach.