Women’s safety app Tea breached, leaking 13,000 user photos to 4chan

A dating safety app designed to protect women has exposed the very users it promised to shield. Tea, which recently topped Apple’s App Store charts, suffered a data breach that leaked 13,000 verification photos and government IDs of its female users, as reported by NBC News.

The hack came after users on 4chan called for a “hack and leak” campaign against the platform. Tea requires women to submit selfies and identification to verify their gender before they can join the service, where they share information about men they’ve dated, marking them as “red flags” or “green flags.”

The company confirmed that attackers accessed a two-year-old database containing approximately 72,000 images. A Tea spokesperson told NBC News the stored data “was originally stored in compliance with law enforcement requirements related to cyberbullying prevention.”

Tea was created by Sean Cook after witnessing his mother’s “terrifying experience with online dating,” including encounters with catfishers and men with undisclosed criminal records.

The breach has already had real-world consequences. Users on 4chan and X have been sharing the stolen photos, and someone created a Google Map showing coordinates of affected Tea users, though without names or addresses.

“Protecting our users’ privacy and data is our highest priority. Tea is taking every necessary step to ensure the security of our platform and prevent further exposure,” the Tea spokesperson told NBC News. Are they going to hire security details for all 13,000 women who’ve been doxxed?

Previously:
• A quantitative analysis of doxing: who gets doxed, and how can we detect doxing automatically?