A dating app for women to do background checks on men – and share information about potential bad actors – said it has been hacked, exposing tens of thousands of photos and other personal information.
Tea, the company behind the Tea Dating Advice app, said in a July 25 alert posted on its website that a security breach compromised "a legacy data storage system" storing about 72,000 images.
Images taken in the breach, which Tea learned about at 6:44 a.m. PST on July 25, include about 13,000 selfies and users' photo identification, plus about 59,000 images from posts, comments and direct messages within the app.
No email addresses or phone numbers were accessed, according to Tea. The breach only affected users who signed up for the app before February 2024, the company said.
In the app's early days, Tea required selfies and IDs "as an added layer of safety to ensure that only women were signing up for the app," according to the company's statement. The ID requirement was removed in 2023, Tea said.
