The user of the Virus Women Dating Security App Tea, a past virus, is the latest victim of a massive cyber attack that has occupied thousands of user images in the legacy database.
First reported by Reddit users, the hack was verified by 404Media, which was later confirmed by TEA itself and affected 72,000 images posted to the app over the past two years. Among the hacked data, 13,000 images are selfies or photo ID cards, such as driver’s license submitted by users to verify their account. Another 59,000 images stored in the database are those who publish the individual to the app.
Founded by Sean Cook, TEA is designed to use only women’s apps, where users can record their negative experiences with men and warn other women at potential danger. According to Tea’s website, 10% of its profits are donated to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
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4chan’s users discovered the vulnerability, and the latter began sharing the photo ID of women on the platform. One user wrote: “Yes, if you sent your face and driver’s license to the Tea app, they’ll publicly bother you! There’s no authentication, nothing. It’s a public bucket. Driver’s license and facial pictures! It’s here before closing it!” 404Media reported that other users said they were collecting personal information from images. Tea said in a statement to the publication that the data is stored to comply with cyberbullying prevention requirements and does not violate current user information.
Earlier this week, TEA became the number one app on the Apple App Store due to several viral tweets from users. Trend apps have since become the subject of controversy online, especially from those who disagree that the app focuses on documenting unnecessary and misconduct in public forums without verification. Many critics (including those related to the app) see the application’s reporting mechanism, such as images of users posting “red flags” men and their user verification system (using photos to confirm” user gender, to invade privacy.
Culturally, others fear that its forum-like nature is too similar to online Snark pages, which often motivate users to gossip and online harassment, and have the potential to lead to Doxxing. It has been with the popular “Do we date the same person?” Facebook page.
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“How long does it take until there is a data leak? I’ll give it a month.” Other cowardly online users responded to the popularity of women’s apps, which include misogynistic “miscuous” apps, including apps designed to track women’s “body counts.” User @tolly_xyz wrote in an article on X: “Introduction to BoxScore, a human-only app where users anonymously share information and warnings about women to spot red flags and get feedback.”
