Tea Dating Advice in the App Store has gained popularity lately, causing quite a stir along the way. Tea is an application exclusively for women, who must confirm their identity by submitting selfies and images of photo identification. The aim of Tea is to enable women to have private discussions regarding the men they are seeing and to help each other avoid engaging with potentially undesirable individuals.
Recently, Tea soared to new heights in the App Store, becoming the foremost free app on Apple, surpassing 2 million downloads. It also climbed the rankings in the Play Store, as the app is accessible on Android devices as well. However, it wasn’t only women who noticed its rise. Some men felt uneasy about the app’s presence. The New York Times highlighted that some detractors on the anonymous forum 4chan called for the hacking of Tea.
A hack did, in fact, take place on Friday, July 25, but neither the Tea app nor the website was compromised. Rather, an unprotected database containing tens of thousands of records was found online. Anyone with the correct link could gain access and view user information, including selfie photos, ID images, and conversation screenshots. Location data could also be extracted from the pictures. Tea acknowledged the data breach after it became widely disseminated online.
