The personal data of tens of thousands of users of woman-only dating safety app Tea has been leaked, including passports, selfies, and driver’s licenses.
Founded in 2023, Tea allowed women to exchange information about men in their area in the interests of safety. The app has had an upsurge in popularity as of late and reached the top of the App Store ranking this week. It recently claimed to have over 4 million users worldwide. The app has received praise from some quarters, but also criticism from commentators who believe it could be used maliciously.
According to a report by 404 Media, users on the infamous anonymous imageboard 4chan posted links to an exposed cloud database hosted on Google’s mobile app development platform, Firebase. Users allegedly then searched through the illicit data, posting users’ selfies and identities. In one screencap captured by 404 Media, one user claimed to have downloaded over 3,000 images.
(Credit: Tea Dating Advice)
In an official statement, Tea confirmed that roughly 72,000 images had been exposed. This included 13,000 selfies and pieces of photo ID submitted for account verification, as well as 59,000 images from users’ posts, comments, and direct messages. The app clarified that the impacted data was from two years ago, so recent sign-ups to the app may not have been impacted. No phone numbers or email addresses are thought to have been compromised.
(Credit: 404 Media)
The users on 4chan allegedly said the user data was stored on what is called a “public bucket,” a storage container whose contents are accessible without requiring authentication or authorization. 404 Media claims that the bucket that was linked by 4chan users was the same storage bucket they uncovered in the app’s source code, though Tea has not officially addressed these claims.
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“We have engaged third-party cybersecurity experts and are working around the clock to secure our systems,” the company said. “At this time, we have implemented additional security measures and have fixed the data issue.”
The infamous imageboard has been implicated in numerous high profile examples of hacked personal information being leaked to the public over the decades. Way back in 2014, it hosted images of multiple Hollywood celebrities as a result of what appeared to be a major security bug in Apple’s iCloud. The website suffered a major hack of its own earlier this year, going offline for two weeks as a result of a “catastrophic” cyberattack that exposed its source code.
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About Will McCurdy
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