Twitter‘s new Tip Jar feature is a neat addition to the platform. However, it’s now been discovered that some tips may reveal people’s home addresses. While this only affects one of the payment partners Twitter is working with — and can be easily avoided — it’s worth being aware of to ensure no unnecessary information is shared when someone sends a tip to their favorite creator.
On May 6, Twitter officially rolled out Tip Jar to select creators, journalists, nonprofits, and others. The feature allows users to send these accounts money directly, making it easy to contribute to someone’s charity, fundraiser, or to gift them with a small tip just because. Accounts that have Tip Jar enabled now show a money icon on their profile page, making it easy to see if an account is accepting tips or not. Best of all, Twitter doesn’t take any cuts from these tips.
While Tip Jar is widely seen as a positive move, a potential security concern has been brought to light shortly after the feature’s release. Accounts with Tip Jar can accept payments using a variety of services, including PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, Patreon, and Bandcamp. When someone chooses PayPal to tip another user, security expert Rachel Tobac has pointed out that PayPal shares that person’s full address with the person they’re tipping. PayPal sends people a receipt every time they receive a tip, and on that receipt, it includes the tipper’s name and address plain as day.
How To Avoid Sharing Your Address When Using Tip Jar
While that sounds scary at first, the good news is that avoiding this security hiccup is pretty easy. Rather than being a security flaw with Tip Jar, this all has to do with a normal part of how PayPal operates. A spokesperson from PayPal has since come out and said that address information is only shared when people send money for ‘goods and services.’ If they choose to send it using the ‘friends and family’ option within PayPal, address info is kept private. Furthermore, Twitter product lead Kayvon Beykpour has confirmed that Twitter “will add a warning for people giving tips via PayPal so that they are aware of this.”
If users want to be extra sure that their address isn’t being shared, an alternative is to send money using a service other than PayPal. If an account is also accepting money through Cash App, Venmo, or something else, going with one of those is a good option. The account will still get 100% of the tip regardless of how it’s sent, meaning users are free to choose another option if they aren’t comfortable using PayPal.
