Tea, which is a women’s safety dating app that has reached the top of the free iOS App Store lists this week, has been a matter of a major security violation. The company confirmed Friday that it has “identified a system authorized access to our system”, which exposed thousands of users’ images.
According to the preliminary results of the tea, this violation allowed approximately 72 72,000 images, which were broken into two groups: 13,000 photos of selfies and photo identification that people presented during account verification and 59,000 images that were publicly viewed in the app with posts, comments and direct messages.
The company said in a statement that those images were in the “heritage data system” that contained more than two years ago. “At this time, there is no evidence that the current or additional user data is affected.”
Earlier on Friday, posts on Reddate and 404 media reported that the faces and IDs of the tea app users were posted on anonymous online message board 4 China.
Consumers need to confirm their identity through selfies or IDs for tea, which is why driver licenses and photos of people’s faces are leaked.
The base of the tea is to provide women with a place to report negative interactions while facing men in the dating pool, and that other women are ready to protect them. This app this week targeted the No. 1 place at Apple’s US App Store, which led to international attention and gave rise to a debate on whether the app violates the privacy of men. If the violation reports prove to be accurate, it will also work in a widespread debate around it, even if online identity and age verification is inherently protective to Internet users.
In the privacy section on your website, Tea says: “Tea dating advice takes appropriate protective measures to damage your personal information, misuse, unauthorized access, reveal, change and destruction. However, please be aware that our efforts are unacceptable.”
Tea said it has launched a thorough investigation to assess the scope and effects of the violation.
