Tea, a women’s safety dating app that surged to the top of the free iOS App Store listings, suffered a major security breach last week. The company confirmed Friday that it “identified authorized access to one of our systems” that exposed thousands of user images. And now we know that DMs were accessed during the breach, too.
Tea’s preliminary findings from the end of last week showed the data breach exposed approximately 72,000 images: 13,000 images of selfies and photo identification that people had submitted during account verification, and 59,000 images that were publicly viewable in the app from posts, comments and direct messages.
Those images had been stored in a “legacy data system” that contained information from more than two years ago, the company said in statement. “At this time, there is no evidence to suggest that current or additional user data was affected.”
Earlier Friday, posts on Reddit and 404 Media reported that Tea app users’ faces and IDs had been posted on anonymous online message board 4chan. Tea requires users to verify their identities with selfies or IDs, which is why driver’s licenses and pictures of people’s faces are in the leaked data.
And on Monday, a Tea spokesperson confirmed to CNET that it additionally “recently learned that some direct messages (DMs) were accessed as part of the initial incident.” Tea has also taken that affected system offline. That confirmation followed a report by 404 Media on Monday that an independent security researcher discovered it would have been possible for hackers to gain access to DMs between Tea users, affecting messages sent up to last week on the Tea app.
Tea said it has launched a full investigation to assess the scope and impact of the breach.
What is Tea?
The premise of Tea is to provide women with a space to report negative interactions they’ve had while encountering men in the dating pool, with the intention of keeping other women safe.
The app is currently sitting at the No. 2 spot for free apps on Apple’s US App Store, right after ChatGPT, drawing international attention and sparking a debate about whether the app violates men’s privacy. Following the news of the data breach, it also plays into the wider ongoing debate around whether online identity and age verification pose an inherent security risk to internet users.
In the privacy section on its website, Tea says: “Tea Dating Advice takes reasonable security measures to protect your Personal Information to prevent loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction. Please be aware, however, that despite our efforts, no security measures are impenetrable.”
