Twitter's new Tip Jar feature, which lets you send money to your favorite Twitter users, is cool, but it also has a privacy issue you should be aware of.
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Security researcher Rachel Tobac noted that “tipping” someone through Tip Jar may reveal your home address to that person, which is a potentially dangerous privacy issue (not to mention completely unnecessary in most cases).
This isn't the case in all cases. Tip Jar lets you choose a payment provider before you "tip" a Twitter user, and if you choose PayPal, the recipient will see your home address when they receive the tip.
Twitter's Kayvon Beykpour acknowledged the issue, saying it was a problem on PayPal's side. "We can't control the address disclosure on PayPal's side, but we will add a warning for people who tip through PayPal so they are aware," he said.
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According to PayPal, this only happens if you send the tip as “goods and services,” so if you choose a different category, like “friends and family,” your address won’t be shared. It also doesn’t appear to happen if you choose to use a payment provider other than PayPal.
This isn't the only privacy issue with Tip Jar. According to Ashkan Soltani, Tip Jar's feature reveals the recipient's email address associated with their account, even when you're not sending them money. Note that this is different from the issue above, which relates to the sender's physical address.
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Tip Jar is currently in beta and not available to all users, but having your home address – or even just your email – exposed to strangers for no reason is a very serious problem, even if it affects a small subset of users.
Information source: mashable.com
