Twitter has launched a new “tip jar” feature that lets people send money to others on the social network.
The company says the feature is “an easy way to support the incredible voices that make up the conversation”.
To begin with, only a select group of people can receive tips – a group Twitter said was made up of “creators”, journalists, experts, and non-profits.
But the feature has also been criticised for exposing personal information such as email addresses.
The tip jar function essentially adds a small icon to a user’s profile – on mobile devices only for now – with a drop-down menu for other payment providers such as PayPal, Venmo, or the Cash App, the latter two of which are popular in the United States.
But because the payment is made through those external systems, some Twitter users noticed that tipping a PayPal account lets the recipient know the postal address of the tip sender.
In other cases, the recipient’s email address could be seen, whether or not any money was sent.
After security expert Rachel Tobac highlighted the issue, Twitter product lead Kayvon Beykpour thanked her for the “good catch” – but said Twitter could not control how PayPal handled that information.
Instead, Twitter said it was updating the information around the tip jar to make clear that some details might be shared.
PayPal, meanwhile, said the issue arose because the Twitter tip jar was using its “goods and services” payment option – which shares details for shipping those goods. It said people can toggle to the “friends and family” option during payment to avoid the issue.
The tip jar function also has support for Bandcamp – widely used by musicians – and Patreon, used by all sorts of independent digital creators such as YouTubers and podcasters.
Twitter says the addition was inspired by people who added payment links or Patreon ads in replies to viral tweets.
