Tea App Data Breach Exposes 72,000 User Photos Including Personal IDs

Tea, an app built specially for women to talk about men, has experienced a huge data breach that leaked thousands of intimate user photos. On Friday, the company stated that hackers had 72,000 images, including personal identification documents, and selfies taken during the verification.

What Happened in the Tea App Data Breach

The data breach on the Tea app has impacted the users who registered for it before February 2024. As explained by the firm officials, the hack made visible to strangers 13,000 of such verification images, including selfies and photo IDs uploaded by users as a part of account creation. Moreover 59, 000 publicly available photographs in posts, comments, and direct messages were obtained through illegitimate means.

Users at 4Chan were first informed about the breach as they found an exposed database, which gave them free access to user data belonging to the Tea app. A list of all the files used with the Tea app was leaked in a full list of files in the database before being eventually secured by security researchers at 404 Media.

How the Tea App Data Breach Affects Users

Tea refers to itself as a safety-oriented community where women, who anonymously research and talk about men they encounter on dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble. The tagline of this app assures the user that it could help them to make sure that their date is never unsafe and avoid being a catfish or being in a relationship.

This data breach is a significant issue of privacy, considering that Tea has 4 million registered users on Instagram, based on a recent post by the company. The verification of photos and identification paperwork may be in danger of revealing the identity and endangering the user’s anonymity and security, which were the primary selling points to the users of the service.

Tea App’s Response to the Data Breach

Tea has also admitted the seriousness of the data breach and is taking measures to avoid any type of such situation in the future. According to the company, their top priority since this breach is protecting the users privacy and data security of the users.

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Further security protocols have been established by the dating safety app, and it is still conducting investigations with the help of cybersecurity experts on the vulnerabilities through which the data breach occurred. The users of the tea will be encouraged to check their account settings and can update their verification photos on a precautionary basis.

The case demonstrates the existing issue of cybersecurity of the application that processes sensitive personal information, and particularly, the application that caters to a segment of vulnerable users who need to receive protection online.