The viral dating safety app promised protection for women, now thousands are exposed after a massive data breach.
Just days after Tea became the number one free app in the App Store, it confirmed a breach that leaked over seventy two thousand private images. That includes more than thirteen thousand selfies and government ID photos, plus nearly sixty thousand pictures from posts, comments and direct messages.
The app markets itself as a safe space for women to anonymously share experiences with men they have dated. But the breach has turned that promise inside out.
Tea stated that only users who joined before February twenty twenty four were impacted and that no phone numbers or emails were exposed. But that is little comfort for those whose faces are now potentially circulating online without their consent.
Reports quickly surfaced on 4chan, TikTok, X and Snapchat where users claimed to have found and shared images from the compromised database. By the time Tea made the breach public, stolen images were already out in the wild.
A Failure of Trust
Tea says it has hired outside cybersecurity experts and fixed the vulnerability. That may prevent future breaches, but the damage has already been done.
At the heart of this story is not just a technical failure. It is a failure of trust.
An app that asked women to upload their faces and speak honestly about their relationships was supposed to offer anonymity and protection. Instead, users have been left exposed by the very platform that promised safety.
A Pattern We Keep Ignoring
Apps built around safety and vulnerability often move fast and break things. That speed comes at a cost. The real question is why we keep handing over intimate data to startups that are still figuring out basic security.
When a platform promises to protect the most vulnerable and then fails, the consequences are not just reputational. They are personal, lasting and in some cases dangerous.
This is not just a story about a privacy breach. It is a wake up call.