The social application Tea, which aims to provide women with a safe space to discuss men, currently has over 4 million registered users. However, Tea, who was the main hit on women’s privacy and security, was caught in a data leak, and CNBC reported that tens of thousands of women’s photo and identity photographs had been leaked online.
Tea’s spokesperson confirmed the hacking on Friday afternoon. The company estimates that approximately 72,000 photographs were illegally accessed, including 13,000 photos for identification and images of government documents.
Tea was designed to create a women ‘ s virtual private network, allowing users to upload male photographs and search for names. Users can leave messages to mark specific male “dangerous signals” or “safe signals” and share relevant information. The heat has recently skyrocketed, with a one-time free-of-charge application at Apple Applications this week, adding nearly a million new registered users over the past few days.
Registered Tea is required to upload a selfie (deleted after application is considered) and verify the identity of female users. Users who pass the audit promise to protect anonymity only by realistic choice of user name. The screen-stopping function is also prohibited in the application.
According to Tea’s spokesperson, hacking was a two-year-old database and explained that “these data were initially stored to meet the requirements of law enforcement to prevent cyberbullying”. The company has hired third-party network security experts to “work 24/7 to strengthen the system”. “Protection of user privacy and data is our highest priority. Tea is taking all necessary measures to ensure the security of the platform and prevent further leaks.”
This reference has caused some dissatisfaction among men. On Thursday night, Forum 4Chan appeared on a discussion post calling for an “invasion leak”. Tea learned about the invasion Friday morning. On Friday morning, 4chan users posted links claiming to be downloadable from the stolen photo library, and a large number of identity photographs of alleged victims appeared on 4chan and social platform X. Google maps even show maps indicating the location of the users suspected of being affected by Tea (only coordinates, without identification information such as name and address).
Sean Cook, the founder of the Tea application, stated in the official web that his creative inspiration arose from witnessing the mother’s “terror experience on an online date”, including emotional fraud and unwitting contact with a person with a criminal record. Tea allows users to conduct background checks of men, search criminal records and photo-direction searches to identify fraudsters.
The application also claimed to contribute 10 per cent of its profits to the United States Domestic Violence Hotline, where some men posted online concerns about false allegations or human searches. There are also users (including some Tea users) who fear that the application may trigger cyber-violence unrelated to physical security.
In a few forums, men proposed the development of a male-specific application as a “retaliation” for Tea. The application, known as Teaborn, which was quickly boycotted by the founders because they publicly accused users of disseminating pornographic material, has now been put down at the Apple Shop.
Tea, in Instagram’s dynamics, claims that over the past few days, new registered users have exceeded 2 million. Many users leave messages on their Instagram page saying that they are still waiting on the list. As of Friday, a large number of commentators began to express their concerns about their data security as hacker incidents became known.