The Tea app was intended to help women date safely. Then it got hacked
'We have engaged third-party cybersecurity experts and are working around the clock to secure our systems,' San Francisco-based Tea Dating Advice Inc. said in a statement. The app and the breach highlight the fraught nature of seeking romance in the age of social media. Here's what to know:
Tea was meant to help women date safely. Tea founder Sean Cook, a software engineer who previously worked at Salesforce and Shutterfly, says on the app's website that he founded the company in 2022 after witnessing his own mother's terrifying experiences. Cook said they included unknowingly dating men with criminal records and being catfished – deceived by men using false identities. Tea markets itself as a safe way for women to anonymously vet men they might meet on dating apps such as Tinder or Bumble – ensuring that the men are who they say they are, not criminals, and not already married or in a relationship. It's been compared to the Yelp of dating. In an Apple Store review, one woman wrote that she used a Tea search to investigate a man she'd begun talking to and discovered over 20 red flags, including serious allegations like assault and recording women without their consent. She said she cut off communication. 'I can't imagine how things could've gone had I not known,' she wrote. A surge in social media attention over the past week pushed Tea to the No. 1 spot at the US Apple Store as of July 24, according to Sensor Tower, a research firm. In the seven days from July 17-23, Tea downloads shot up 525 percent compared to the week before. Tea said in an Instagram post that it had reached 4 million users.
Tea has been criticized for invading men's privacy. A female columnist for The Times of London newspaper who signed into the app on Thursday called Tea a 'man-shaming' site and complained that 'this is simply vigilante justice entirely reliant on the scruples of anonymous women.' 'With Tea on the scene, what man would ever dare date a woman again?' It's unclear what legal recourse an aggrieved man might have if he feels he's been defamed or had his privacy violated on Tea or a similar social media platform. In May, a federal judge in Illinois threw out an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit by a man who'd been criticized by women in the Facebook chat group 'Are We Dating the Same Guy,' Bloomberg Law reported.
The breach exposed thousands of selfies and photo IDs. In its statement, Tea reported that about 72,000 images were leaked online, including 13,000 images of selfies or photo identification that users submitted during account verification. Another 59,000 images that were publicly viewable in the app from posts, comments, and direct messages were also accessed, according to the company's statement. No email addresses or phone numbers were exposed, the company said, and the breach only affects users who signed up before February 2024. 'At this time, there is no evidence to suggest that additional user data was affected. Protecting Tea users' privacy and data is our highest priority,' Tea said. It said users did not need to change their passwords or delete their accounts. 'All data has been secured.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Arabiya
4 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
China and US still key trade partners, commerce minister says
China and the United States remain important trade and economic partners, and American companies are welcome to invest, the Chinese commerce minister told a US business delegation on Wednesday, according to his ministry. Trade relations between the countries have seen ups and downs but dialogue and consultation on 'an equal footing' are the key to resolving differences, Wang Wentao told the US-China Business Council, the ministry statement said. The minister also pointed to the trade talks between China and the US, the latest one being held in Stockholm earlier this week, and said it is hoped both countries can meet halfway so that they can jointly maintain stable relations. US and Chinese officials agreed to seek an extension of their 90-day tariff truce on Tuesday, following two days of what both sides described as constructive talks in Stockholm aimed at defusing an escalating trade war between the world's two biggest economies that threatens global growth.
Asharq Al-Awsat
18 hours ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Gold Steadies with Focus on US-China Talks, Fed Meeting
Gold prices held nearly steady on Tuesday as markets turned their focus to upcoming US-China talks and the Federal Reserve's policy decision. Spot gold steadied at $3,313.63 per ounce, by 10:05 ET (14:04 GMT). Prices hit their lowest point since July 9 on Monday after a trade deal between the United States and European Union dampened safe haven demand for the yellow metal. US gold futures was unchanged at $3,311.60. "The lack of clear details and a defined outline of the announced trade deals... continues to keep market participants on edge," said Zain Vawda, analyst at MarketPulse by OANDA, Reuters reported. Vawda added that a break below $3,300 could trigger a decline toward the $3,000 level in the medium term. US and Chinese officials held more than five hours of talks in Stockholm on Monday aimed at extending their trade truce by three months, with discussions set to resume Tuesday. Analysts note that recent US deals with the EU and Japan offered some relief, but talks with China remain far more complex and prolonged. On the US interest rate front, the US central bank's two-day policy meeting kicks off later in the day, with rates widely expected to remain unchanged. Investors will closely scrutinize the Fed's commentary for any signals on the timing and pace of potential rate cuts ahead. Markets are currently pricing in just under 50 basis points of rate cuts by year-end, with October seen as the most likely starting point, said Peter Grant, vice president and senior metals strategist at Zaner Metals. However, dissent from two Fed members could shift expectations toward a September cut, which could potentially boosting gold, he added. Gold tends to benefit in a low interest rate environment as the reduced yield on competing assets makes the non-yielding metal more attractive to investors. Spot silver fell 0.5% to $37.98 per ounce, while platinum was steady at $1,389.85 and palladium slipped 1.2% to $1,232.67.
Al Arabiya
a day ago
- Al Arabiya
How US adults are using AI, according to AP-NORC polling
Most US adults say they use artificial intelligence to search for information, but fewer are using it for work, drafting email, or shopping. Younger adults are most likely to be leaning into AI, with many using it for brainstorming and work tasks. The new findings from an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll show that 60 percent of Americans overall–and 74 percent of those under 30–use AI to find information at least some of the time. The poll highlights the ubiquity of AI in some areas–as well as its limits in others. Only about 4 in 10 Americans say they have used AI for work tasks or coming up with ideas, a sign that the tech industry's promises of highly productive AI assistants still haven't touched most livelihoods after years of promotion and investment. At the same time, wider AI adoption by younger Americans shows that could change. There's a particularly large age divide on brainstorming: About 6 in 10 adults under age 30 have used AI for coming up with ideas, compared with only 2 in 10 of those age 60 or older. Young adults are also more likely to use AI to come up with ideas at least daily. Young adults are most likely to use AI. Bridging the generations are people like Courtney Thayer, 34, who's embracing AI in some parts of her life and avoiding it in others. Thayer said she is regularly using ChatGPT to come up with ideas about planning what to eat while also having it calculate the nutritional value of the pumpkin-banana-oat bread she's been baking for years. 'I asked it to make a meal prep for the week then to add an Asian flair,' said Thayer of Des Moines, Iowa. 'It wasn't the most flavorful thing I've ever had in my life, but it's a nice stepping off point. More importantly, I use it for the amount so that I'm not over-serving myself and ending up with wasted food.' The audiologist has embraced AI at work, too, in part because AI technology is imbued in the hearing aids she recommends to patients, but also because it makes it easier and faster to draft professional emails. She avoids it for important information, particularly medical advice, after witnessing chatbots hallucinate false information about topics she spent years studying. Roughly 4 in 10 Americans say they use AI for work tasks at least sometimes, while about one-third say they use it for helping to write emails, create or edit images, or for entertainment, according to the poll. About one-quarter say they use it to shop. Younger adults are more likely than older ones to say they have used artificial intelligence to help with various tasks, the poll shows. Searching for information is AI's most common use. Of the eight options, searching for information is the most common way Americans have interacted with AI. And even that may be an undercount since it's not always apparent how AI is surfacing what information people see online. For more than a year, the dominant search engine Google has automatically provided AI-generated responses that attempt to answer a person's search query, appearing at the top of results. Perhaps defying emerging media consumption trends, 28-year-old Sanaa Wilson usually skips right past those AI-generated summaries. 'It has to be a basic question like 'What day does Christmas land on in 2025?'' said the Los Angeles-area resident. 'I'll be like 'That makes sense. I trust it.' But when it gets to specific news related to what's happening in California or what's happening to the education system and stuff like that, I will scroll down a little bit further.' Wilson, a freelance data scientist, does use AI heavily at work to help with coding, which she said has saved her hundreds of dollars she would have had to pay for training. She also occasionally uses it to come up with work-related ideas, an attempt to bring back a little of the collaborative brainstorming experience she remembers from college life but doesn't have now. When it first came out, Wilson said she also used ChatGPT to help write emails until she learned more about its environmental impact and the possibility it would erode her own writing and thinking skills over time. 'It's just an email. I can work it out,' she said. 'However many minutes it takes or seconds it takes, I can still type it myself.' Most don't use AI for companionship–but it's more common for young adults. The least common of the eight AI uses was AI companionship, though even that showed an age divide. Just under 2 in 10 of all adults and about a quarter of those under 30 say they've used AI for companionship. Wilson has no interest in AI companions, though she isn't surprised that others do because of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on her generation's social experiences. 'I totally understand and sympathize behind why people in my age group are leveraging it in that way,' Wilson said. Thayer, the audiologist, also has no interest in AI companionship, though she tries to be polite with chatbots just in case they're keeping track. 'I mean, I am nice to it just because I've watched movies, right?' Thayer said laughing. 'So I'll say 'Can you make me a meal plan please?' and 'Can you modify this please?' And then I'll say 'Thank you.'' The AP-NORC poll of 1,437 adults was conducted July 10–14 using a sample drawn from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the US population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
