Tea is an online “safe space” for women to share stories about their dating life or get input from other women on men they’re currently dating and some of the habits they’re developing. However, recently, the service had a huge data leak that exposed a lot of information. Personal messages, public posts, and even pictures that these women shared on the platform were made public. Keep on reading to discover how it happened.
Hackers expose over 1 million messages on the Tea Dating Advice app
Tea, the number #1 in the Apple App Store, has had multiple breaches that exposed private conversations between users, public posts, and much more. These conversations were not just about dating men or sharing their opinions or “red flags” about certain men. Some users used the Tea dating advice app to share some very personal information, like their phone numbers or information on partners who were cheating. In addition to these posts being leaked, hackers also exposed private conversations about the abortions they had. The women who shared these stories finally had a platform they trusted to share their experiences. However, after the data leak, this is not the case anymore.
Over 70K pictures were leaked as well!
In the data leak, over 70.000 photos from people who joined the platform before February in 2024. These images included selfies and even government IDs of the women who signed up. 4-chan users weaponized the leaked data. They then created a “Facemash” style website to rate the pictures that were exposed. In addition, they also shared the personal information on other hacker forums to spread it further. Experts who investigated the breaches said that the company had flaws in its fundamental way of operating. For example, a lot of these pictures and messages were stored on unsecured Firebase storage. This was publicly accessible without authentication, so anyone could have accessed the information.