A dating safety app that allows women to do background checks on men and anonymously share \u201cred flag\u201d behaviour has been hacked, exposing thousands of members\u2019 images, posts and comments.<\/p>\n
Tea Dating Advice, a US-based women-only app with 1.6 million users, said there had been \u201cunauthorised access\u201d to 72,000 images submitted by women.<\/p>\n
Some included images of women holding photo identification for verification purposes, which Tea\u2019s own privacy policy promises are \u201cdeleted immediately\u201d after authentication.<\/p>\n
Tea said the breach affected members who signed up before February 2024. It added it had \u201cacted fast\u201d and was \u201cworking with some of the most trusted cyber security experts\u201d.<\/p>\n
The app has recently experienced a surge in popularity \u2013 as well as criticism from some who claim it is anti-men.<\/p>\n
Tea lets women check whether potential partners are married or registered sex offenders as well as run reverse image searches to protect against \u201ccatfishing\u201d, where people use fake online identities.<\/p>\n
But one of the most controversial aspects of Tea is that it allows women to share information on men they have dated to \u201cavoid red flags\u201d but also highlight those with \u201cgreen flag\u201d qualities.<\/p>\n
The company said the breached photos \u201ccan in no way be linked to posts within Tea\u201d.<\/p>\n
The firm blocks screenshots so that posts are not shared outside the app.<\/p>\n
But on Friday it also admitted that an additional 59,000 images from the app showing posts, comments and direct messages from over two years ago were accessed.<\/p>\n
Tea said: \u201cWe\u2019re taking every step to protect this community \u2013 now and always.\u201d<\/p>\n
BBC News has contacted Tea for comment.<\/p>\n
The company was set up in November 2022 by Sean Cook, a software engineer who said he was inspired to create Tea after witnessing his mother\u2019s online dating experiences.<\/p>\n
He told Medium in May: \u201cI was shocked by how easy it was for catfish, scammers and criminals to take advantage of women on dating apps and how little traditional dating apps do to protect users.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, some men \u2013 and women \u2013 have challenged these types of groups claiming that they put men at risk of invasion of privacy and defamation.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, an individual named Nikko D\u2019Ambrosio took legal action against Facebook\u2019s owner Meta because of a number of statements made about him in a chat group called \u201cAre We Dating the Same Guy\u201d.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit was thrown out by a federal judge in Illinois.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A dating safety app that allows women to do background checks on men and anonymously share \u201cred flag\u201d behaviour has been hacked, exposing thousands of members\u2019 images, posts and comments. Tea Dating Advice, a US-based women-only app with 1.6 million users, said there had been \u201cunauthorised access\u201d to 72,000 images submitted by women. Some included […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}