I knew that the viral application “Tea” was in trouble, but I did not expect a data violation

If you’ve paid attention to your social flows lately, you may have heard recent chatting on tea, an application that works like Yelp, but instead of tie and review restaurants and stores, women pay the men they know. The application has existed since 2023, but for reasons that I cannot identify, it has made its way at the top of the Apple App Store App Store. It was the first to have heard of it, and I thought it looked like a horrible idea. And today, my instincts have already been proven, but not the way I expected.

It seems that the users of 4chan and Reddit managed to design a data violation, to obtain and disseminate user verification images – including photos of driving licenses – which were submitted when women have registered in the service. A spokesperson for the application confirmed to me that “tea has identified unauthorized access to one of the [its] Systems and immediately launched a complete survey to assess the scope and impact. “The initial results of this effort suggest” the incident involved an inherited data storage system containing information more than two years ago. About 72,000 images – including approximately 13,000 selfie images and identification of photos submitted when checking the account and 59,000 images publicly visible in the application from publications, comments and direct messages – were consulted without authorization. “”

Basically, things degenerated very quickly, going from viral popularity to hacking in a few days. Unfortunately, I have already submitted my own verification image, because I intended to write on the application suddenly everywhere. Although I am technically by writing on this subject now, I am bored by my possible inclusion in the violation, although it seems more recently created accounts created (for the moment).

If all this is news for you, let me, as they say, to overthrow tea.

What is the Tea application?

Tea is an application that was launched two years ago and which became viral this week, becoming the most downloaded free application of the Apple Apple App. His slogan is to “go out together for women” and he announces that users can “carry out history checks”, “identify potential catfish” and “check that he is not a sex offender”, among others. A notable feature is the possibility of assigning a given man a red or green flag, in the same way that you could add a similar emoji or laughing at someone’s Facebook status. By tea, you should be able to “find men from the verified green flag” in this way and avoid a red man.

In practice, it works like this: women connect with anonymous user names to assess and review the men with whom they have interacted. You can search for a man to see what other women have said about their alleged experiences with him. The idea is that women can use the service to examine someone before a first appointment, dig more deeply on the history of a man before becoming serious, or discover if a boyfriend cheat. Men are not at all authorized to register for application accounts, so they have no contribution to what is said of themselves or others.

It works similarly to “Let’s go out with the same guy?” Facebook groups and forums that have arisen in major cities in recent years, providing another outlet when women can discuss the men with whom they came out with a certain degree of anonymity. I never liked these groups myself, because even if I recognize the value of being able to identify the attackers, cheaters and general fraudsters – and that personally, women who used the groups to do, including the one who received a tip that helped her discover the legal documentation of the accusations of previous domestic violence against his major reputation.

I am not telling the victims to keep the abuse of the abuses they have suffered, but it is not difficult to imagine an article on an abusive or narcissistic man could in fact be written by a jealous friend, a competitive colleague, or an ex with blows (but otherwise unharmed). A disinterest in inadvertently joining an ill-informed crowd generally removed me from these groups, but when I saw people laying these same complaints concerning tea on social networks last night, my interested party was stung, that is to say when I downloaded it to see what the buzz was talking about.

The data collected and what we know about the violation

When I tried to create an account, I was first welcomed with a screen that let me know that the application was completely anonymous and that the screenshots were impossible. I captured this message to test it and it appeared empty in my camera roll. (You know all the old wisdom about how if you have to do something in secret, you might not do it? Yeah.)

Then Tea asked me to prove that I was a woman. Ignoring the rigidity of this framing (and the potential implications for LGBTQ +people) for the moment, I have broken a selfie with the camera in the application. The photo was hideous – I had just finished my weekly facial peil at home – but that’s what I got to get involved in this mess. But I’m getting lost. (In fact, I do not do it: the fact that I am upset by someone can see something that is not very flattering and private about my subject without my consent underlines the problem with the basic premise of the application.)

As indicated, Tea has published a statement to me and our friends from CNET saying that hacked photos come from an “inherited data system” containing information over two years old, and there is “no evidence” to suggest that more recent images or information has been disclosed. Honestly, that doesn’t make me feel better. The worst case for me is that the information is false and the recent verification photos are over there. The best case is always the one where 13,000 other users have exhibited their data. However, the tea representative claims that the application developer “hired third -party cybersecurity experts” and works to secure the system.

“The protection of confidentiality and data from our users is our highest priority. Tea takes all the necessary measures to ensure the safety of our platform and prevent a new exposure,” she said. “We are committed to transparency and provide updates as more information becomes available.”

Finally, after taking my photo, the application told me that I could earn free access to life by inviting three other women. I sent an invitation to my own phone number and two to friends, following a message that said: “Test for work, contempt.” One of them was curious and downloaded the application. Now she is also worried about the breach, and that’s my fault. When you lie down with dogs …

I still couldn’t try tea myself

After sending my selfie, I was put on a waiting list while, supposedly, someone on tea staff checked that my photo was, I suppose, quite feminine. I stayed on this waiting list from 7 p.m. last night until this afternoon, but where there was once a message in my application on waiting for verification, I now see a rotating loading icon. Although the application is always available for download, my own integration seems to have stalled, although I cannot say with certainty if it has something to do with data violation. (I asked for clarification and will update this story when I hear.)

For what it is worth, at no time was I invited to submit a photo of my government identifier, although I was not sure if it would have been the next step after leaving the selfie waiting list or this level of verification was deleted in favor of the selfie in the application. From what I saw on social networks, however, there are a lot of identity photos of the floating tea users.

At some point, I may be able to access the application, when I will provide an update on what it is.

I saw a disaster coming

Although I do not necessarily expect a data violation supplied by revenge by the reactionaries on the Internet who challenged the raison d’être of tea, I expected that things do not reveal themselves well at the minute when I saw viral articles on the application. This is because, at the risk of getting out as a elder millennium, I saw all of this before. At the end of 2013, I tried an application called Lulu which served almost the same function. He also initially prevented men of access and in fact gave women the possibility of linking the personal details of a man on his Lulu page without his consent. Where Lulu was a little more girl and took more pleasure in gossip, tea claims to be more focused on security, but General Gist is similar.

Lulu is offline after an acquisition of 2016 which saw the deletion of the man’s functionality, followed by its silent release of the App Store, but the application spent a few years carrying out massive revolutions in response to the initial criticisms presented there. He finally granted men access and gave them the opportunity to withdraw from the presence. (Other a man’s rate services have also aroused criticism: at least one man continued his inclusion in a group “Do we go out with the same guy?”)

I think I am so discouraged by tea because I used Lulu when I was at university. It revealed that little recommendable and disappointing things about some men in my life, but realistically, I would not even have downloaded the application if I did not already wear suspicions, so what was the point of invading their privacy just to confirm what I already felt, otherwise I did not know? Lulu did not allow detailed comments, but that gave users a variety of timid hashtags to apply to a man, ranging from #Globetrotter to #Totalf — Ingdickhead. It was unnecessarily vindictive, and what is worse, I did not simply use it to assess potential romantic partners; Out of curiosity and selfishness, I even invaded the intimacy of my Platonic male friends, who were horrified to learn (from me) that they had non -consensual profiles on an application that they had never heard of. After seeing how raped they felt, I removed it by guilt.

Do not notice people

Any concept “Yelp for People” will always be a terrible idea, especially when it is linked to the archaic idea that dating is nothing more than a conflictual battle of the sexes instead of a good effort to get to know potential partners who could enrich your life while delicately avoiding those who cannot.

But even if I expected a disaster, I did not expect the speed with which the tea would collapse, nor how poetically – although I certainly agree as (or more) vehemently with the release of the driving license and photos of verification of women as I do with the anonymous notation of the personalities of men. You might say that tea consumers have a taste of their own medication, but it was the medicine that no one should have taken in the first place.