Twitter’s New ‘Tip Jar’ Pay System Could Leak Your Address If You’re Not Careful
Image via sitthiphong / Shutterstock.com
This week, Twitter announced ‘Tip Jar’, a new feature that allows users to add a button to their profile so their followers can financially support their work. Tips can be made through services such as Cash App or PayPal.
Twitter doesn’t manage the payments for Tip Jar. Instead, it allows users to choose from a list of third-party providers through which they accept their tips. Currently, services include Bandcamp, Cash App, Patreon, PayPal, and Venmo.
However, there have already been reports of a safety vulnerability. A Twitter user found out that if one opts to accept tips via PayPal, the sender’s personal address may be revealed to the receiver. This means the users you’re tipping on Twitter could be privy to your home address.
This lapse seems to only happen if you mark the payment as “good and services,” as confirmed by PayPal to Engadget. To avoid the leak, be sure to select “friends and family” instead.
To prevent users from inadvertently giving away their address details, Twitter’s Head of Product Kayvon Beykpour says the firm will “add a warning for people giving tips via PayPal so that they are aware of this.”
In a statement to Input, Twitter explained, “When tipping with Tip Jar, people are notified that they’re going to a separate app or website to send their tip, and that tipping on that third-party platform is subject to the platform’s terms.
“We’re updating our in-app notification and Help Centre article to make it clearer that other platforms, per their terms, may share information about people sending tips to one another,” the social network added.
Huge heads up on PayPal Twitter Tip Jar. If you send a person a tip using PayPal, when the receiver opens up the receipt from the tip you sent, they get your *address*. Just tested to confirm by tipping @yashar on Twitter w/ PayPal and he did in fact get my address I tipped him. https://t.co/R4NvaXRdlZ pic.twitter.com/r8UyJpNCxu
— Rachel Tobac (@RachelTobac) May 6, 2021
[via Input, cover image via sitthiphong / Shutterstock.com]
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