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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

Apparently if you send someone a tip with this they get your mailing address as part of the receipt. https://twitter.com/racheltobac/status/1390409874006183936

This is a PayPal issue, but Twitter are responding by adding a warning so people know it will happen: https://twitter.com/kayvz/status/1390423761183117312?

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Yep PayPal is awful about this stuff. I have a friend who's deadname was leaking through PayPal reciepts. They couldn't change it because PayPal insisted on showing the name of the account holder which was validated through the bank account linking. To protect them I now manage the account they have people send payments and donations to. It's suboptimal but it's the only way we can be totally sure their deadname doesn't show again.

I knew PayPal was bad before, but I've hated them ever since that info leak.

Could it not be fixed by updating the bank account name?

you have to update your social security card first. it's doable, but it's a whole chain of paperwork and documents. I transitioned 5 years ago and I still haven't really updated my legal name.

You aren't kidding... I just spent a little time reading about the process, but stopped when I was about a dozen tabs deep.

But isn't legal name official name?

I mean, I can claim my name is whatever I like, but when the police pull me or a bank clerk ask me for an ID to identify myself before withdrawing the money, what stays there would be something different.

I am surprised that in the USA one is even allowed to present himself in the official context by the "non official" name. Is changing a legal name there so complex? Yes, it's a lot of work to change all documents, but does it really take five years?

so the process, iirc, is:

* Court order to change name (I've done this, but decided I didn't like the name so I need to do it again.)

* Send form to change sex on driver's license (did this.)

* Go in person to DMV to update name and get new photo (haven't done this because pandemic.)

* Update gender and name on passport (requires attestation from doctor, copy of court order, previous passport and current ID, if passport is expired) (haven't done this.)

* Update gender and name on social security card (requires updated passport.)

* Update name on bank (requires updated social security card)

And to change sex on birth certificate, according to the rules of my state:

* Get endorsements from therapist and psychiatrist for vaginoplasty.

* Get vaginoplasty.

* Doctor attests to the state that you have a vagina now.

* Original birth certificate, attestation and passport -> updated birth certificate.

The last step isn't super necessary unless you're emigrating to another country.

Looks unnecessary complicated, but it seems there's no way around some of the complexity if you live in a country without a centrally issued ID for every citizen.

However, the whole gender and name changing process should not have to be more complicated than what people that want to change name after marrying have to do. But I guess there's still no political will to make it simpler.

Today's ten thousand: "Deadnaming" is apparently calling a transgender person by the old name they abandoned, a "deadname" being the name of their former identity.

IMO that's a weird term.

Deleting a record in some databases uses a process of marking the record with a “tombstone”, processes can be killed. Abandoning a former name that doesn’t align with a gender identity? Yeah, it’s dead to me.

Oh I get the logic all right, but I imagine the transition is a pretty sensitive topic that can be difficult for some family members or acquaintances. And this kind of vocabulary (death-related) in this context sounds like an odd choice.

But that's just a thought, I have no idea how it feels to transition and what kind of emotions are involved. Maybe it's more definitive that way, acting like the former identity does not "live" anymore.

https://xkcd.com/1053/

What's a deadname?

It's the name a transgender person used to be know by prior to their transition.

It's highly offensive (to some at least) and refering to someone by their "deadname" is considered grounds for a permanent ban on a number of silicon valley services.

This seems like an issue on the Twitter implementation side. I don't know how the newer PayPal API handles it but on the one I am familiar with.

NOSHIPPING 1 — PayPal does not display shipping address fields and removes shipping information from the transaction.

https://developer.paypal.com/docs/nvp-soap-api/set-express-c...

That appears to specifically be with PayPal, not the Tip Jar feature in general.

I do agree with the OP on Twitter though. While this is a PayPal thing, Twitter is integrating them into their service and so should be educating their users.

Based on follow up tweets from the OP it looks like Twitter have already reacted to it in some way? Not sure. Would be interesting to see what they do.

This is pretty dissuading from using the tip feature. Ultimately, Twitter had to make a choice of which processor to go with and PayPal was clearly the winner here. Perhaps in a year or so they may move to Stripe.

What would (maybe) be a good move is to process the transactions through Twitter itself?

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