Dating safety app Tea breached, exposing 72,000 user images

Tea, an app that allows women to post anonymous comments about men they’ve supposedly dated, announced Friday that it has suffered a data breach, with hackers gaining access to 72,000 images.

That number includes 13,000 selfies and photo IDs submitted for account verification, as well as 59,000 images from posts, comments, and direct messages, the company said. Tea also said that no emails or phone numbers were exposed, and that only users who signed up before February 2024 were affected.

“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.”

404 Media reported that 4chan users claimed to be sharing personal data and selfies from Tea after discovering an exposed database.

The hack comes after the Tea app seemed to achieve viral popularity this week. As of Saturday morning, it was still number one in the free app rankings in Apple’s App Store.