Tea App A Second Tea Breach Reveals Users’ DMs About Abortions and Cheating
Tea App A Second Tea Breach Reveals Users’ DMs About Abortions and Cheating
www.404media.co
A Second Tea Breach Reveals Users’ DMs About Abortions and Cheating
69 comments
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Everyone is talking about the poor security practices, which is fair. Or they are talking about the appropriateness of such an app existing, which is also fair.
But the immediate take away should be, especially in today’s political environment, that we cannot and should not trust sensitive data that leaves our device, particularly if you are of any kind of non privileged group.
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This has been the case for a long time, so suddenly you have apps like Tea that encourage you to upload info of other people. So now even the few that take care not to upload their info can be nicely monitored. And the Gestapo does not even need to pay their informants for it.
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This sounds like victim-blaming. This website didn't even secure their database with a password. Come on. I'm sure their privacy policy gave the standard promises about storing their private data in a secure way, which they did not do.
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Encouraging people to be safe and care about their privacy on the internet is not victim blaming.
I'm sure their privacy policy gave the standard promises about storing their private data in a secure way, which _they did not do. _
This is what people want to warn others of. The developers of Tea are hardly the only offenders. Definitely not an example of victim blaming.
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In the current environment, at-risk people (women, immigrants, etc) who might have “at-risk” activities (abortion, immigration, etc) don’t have the luxury of relying on a privacy policy. I am not blaming them, I am simply stating how it must be if they are to avoid adverse actions.
This particular instance involved poorly secured data; what happens when warrantless demands are made by the government?
The Tea debacle proves that sensitive data cannot be trusted once out of your hands.
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I'm sure their privacy policy gave the standard promises about storing their private data in a secure way, which they did not do.
Their ToS can be found here. Section G of their Limitation of Liability tries to shield them from liability against data breaches. But if they were criminally negligent, the ToS won’t protect them. The Data Protection section basically just says “check our Privacy Policy for info on what we collect”, which is pretty standard fare for a ToS.
The Security section of their Privacy Policy is also extremely boilerplate. Here’s the entire thing:
Security of Your Personal Information
The security of your Personal Information is important to us. When you enter sensitive information (such as credit card number) on our Services, we encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL).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.If you use a password on the Services, you are responsible for keeping it confidential. Do not share it with any other person. If you believe your password has been misused, please notify us immediately.This one particular sentence may end up burning them though:
Tea Dating Advice takes reasonable security measures to protect your Personal Information to prevent loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction.
I think most people (and the courts) would agree that putting a password on your database is a reasonable security measure that would be expected per this Privacy Policy. Especially since their next sentence goes on to elucidate that users should keep their passwords confidential.
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This is why you don’t vibe code a webservice
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Even an AI wouldn't do something this stupid.
Every piece of information it its data set about Firebase would have told it to secure the database.
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They hired an investigator? Any investigator worth a shit is gonna say that they're liable for failing to secure private data they collected,
as well as for retaining data they were apparently legally obligated to deleteEdit: Misread that segment, they actually presented it as if they were deleted to users, but apparently retained them to comply with vague "law enforcement requirements."
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The Tea app is a women-only dating safety platform where members can share reviews about men, with access to the platform only granted after providing a selfie and government ID verification.
This sounds irresistible for angry misogynists. The only thing that surprises me about this is that it didn’t happen earlier.
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The only thing that surprises me about this is that it didn’t happen earlier.
I'm way out of the dating game at this point, and also a man, so it's very likely that I'm just out of the loop
But I hadn't heard anything about this app until a couple weeks ago when I saw an article or two about it
Then about a week later this happened
So I kind of feel like maybe most of the assholes who did this were similarly unaware of it until it got some exposure and then it was on their radar.
I would certainly imagine that most women using this app probably weren't telling the angry misogynists in their lives about this app.
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Warning I'm going off memory and I'm too lazy to check this.
One of the articles on the first data leek mentioned it became big on the google play store shortly before the leek. It probably just wasn't around long enough for you to notice it.
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Ostensibly, a noble goal. Practice is a bit more fuzzy.
Also: nothing is ever new
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"Sir, we've already been breached once!"
"But what about second breach?"
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Now there are two of them. A second breach has hit the app.
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This is why age verification is dangerous. If a company can just forget to delete you ID picture, it will happen...
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On the one hand, sucks that a leak like this even happens anymore, no one deserves to be doxxed like that. On the other hand, I struggle to feel bad for the users of the doxxing app getting doxxed in return...
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Don't want your information on the internet? don't upload it to anyone on or over the internet, it really is a fucking simple concept.
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don't upload it to the internet!
or use a smart phone
or corporate searches that track you
or go to any website with ads - they track you
hell don't even search the internet! your ISP tracks dns requests
or use a modern tv that tracks what is on your screen
or you can do custom phone from - just unlock the bootloader, root it, and install! then just setup pihole/adguard/self-host everything
it's simple, for privacy just go live in a yurt in the woods to not be tracked 24/7
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And live in a cave! 😬
It would be nice if also they secured data too.
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Posted on an article about an app encouraging different users to upload info about you without your consent. Yes, really simple.
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At least they’re honest, they did spill tea.
A whole lot of tea.
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its like the ashley madison drama, which exposed cheating.
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Sir, a second plane.meme
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If you're out of the loop, I found this article fairly helpful for a primer on the issues. It's CNN, but I can't be arsed to find a more kosher source.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/25/us/tea-app-dating-privacy-cec
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404media did a great piece about what happened. available as podcast too. https://www.404media.co/a-second-tea-breach-reveals-users-dms-about-abortions-and-cheating/
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I never thought there would be a dating intel war going on and this the second time too.
69 comments
The company should be sued into the ground. This is horrendous
In any other engineering discipline this would he negligence.
At least some of the negligence is on Google, for the atrocious default security settings in Firebase
The vulnerability is called hospital gown because they leave the back end wide open by design. It's not even a traditional vulnerability, since it's technically working as intended
Both the company, for failing to protect its users; and a large majority of its users, for doxxing and libel.
Its unfortunate that it happened this way, but now the people who are being libeled against and doxxed have the ability to find out about it where they didn't before.
I'm not going to hold it against women for having a private group to tell on predatory dudes when this existed and nobody ever faced any consequences. What We Learned About the 70K-Person Telegram Channel on How to Rape Women
Just another story where victims go on to become absuers it seems.
You get 89 cents in the settlement. Do you prefer to get a direct deposit or a check?
Nah, they just go bankrupt.
Nah, just stop using it. Sueing does nothing, it just benefits lawyers and not any of us.
It sucks for those people, but everyone should expect anything they say online to be possibly tied back to them. Secrets and identification information don't mix. Especially online. The good news is that there is no evidence any of it is real, anyone can lie on the site saying whatever they want, so if doxed someone can just say they were bored and wanted to fit in and see what others were discussing or such. Hopefully for them it doesn't turn into people getting hurt for talking behind someone's back like it often does offline.
fuck off with that complacency
there's so much underlying rules for private communication between computer systems, this type of thing is pure neglect boardering on international.
there's no reason to think everything online should be open and available. we should all be allowed to be in private spaces, especially if it's advertised as a private space