I Knew the Viral 'Tea' App Was Trouble, but I Didn't Expect a Data Breach
If you have been paying attention to your social feeds of late, you may have heard the recent chatter about Tea, an app that functions like Yelp—but instead of rating and reviewing restaurants and stores, women are passing judgment on men they know. The app has been around since 2023, but for reasons I can't identify, it rocketed to the top of Apple's App Store chart this week. It was the first I'd heard of it, and I thought it sounded like an awful idea. And today, my instincts have already been proven right—though not in the way I expected. It seems 4chan and Reddit users have successfully engineered a data breach, obtaining and disseminating user verification images—including photos of driver's licenses—that were submitted when women signed up for the service. A spokesperson for the app confirmed to me that, "Tea identified unauthorized access to one of [its] systems and immediately launched a full investigation to assess the scope and impact." The initi...
