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

The dating safety application Tea, designed for women to anonymously share experiences about men they've dated, revealed on Friday that it has fallen victim to a data breach. This incident resulted in hackers accessing a staggering 72,000 images, which includes 13,000 selfies and photo IDs submitted for user verification, alongside 59,000 images from posts, comments, and direct messages. In a statement, Tea assured users that email addresses and phone numbers were not compromised during the breach, and only those who registered prior to February 2024 were affected. The company has enlisted the help of external cybersecurity specialists and is actively working to enhance its security measures. “We are committed to securing our systems and have already implemented additional safeguards,” the company stated. Reports from 404 Media indicated that users on 4chan claimed to be distributing personal data and selfies from the Tea app after identifying an unsecured database. This breach comes in the wake of the app's surge in popularity, as it dominated the rankings in Apple’s App Store for free applications as of Saturday morning.