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Tea Is the Top Free App Right Now. What It Is and Why So Many Women Are Using It

Yahoo

an hour ago

Yahoo

Tea Is the Top Free App Right Now. What It Is and Why So Many Women Are Using It

Ask any single woman right now, and they'd probably tell you how rough it is in the dating world. With ghosting and misleading bios, it can be challenging to know who you're really talking to on dating apps -- and whether they're telling you the truth. Tea is an app that allows women to anonymously review men and spill "the tea" on men they've dated. About 1 million women have started using the app in the past week. It's reminiscent of those Facebook "Are We Dating the Same Guy?" groups that many cities have, except this app uses AI to verify that the people making profiles are women. Tea has become a viral sensation in the last few weeks -- for good and bad reasons. The app experienced a security breach -- revealed Friday -- in which data, including women's driver's licenses and selfies, was posted to 4chan. The breach is reportedly the result of Tea's unsecured database. The company confirmed to CNET that unauthorized access to its systems had occurred. What is the Tea app? Tea is a free, women-only app exclusive to the US. It's not a dating app; it's a tool that women use in addition to their dating apps. It's a space where you can share negative interactions while dating and solicit feedback on specific men you date to expose potential risks and protect other women. It was founded in 2023 by Sean Cook, who cites his mother getting catfished online as the motivation for the app. Tea has taken off in the past week, gaining more than a million users in that time. According to a social media post from Tea, the app has about 4 million users. It's the top free app in the App Store right now. Tea is intended to function as a community that keeps women safe, something that traditional dating apps lack. With candid reviews and warnings from other women about people they've dated, Tea offers women the security of having a better idea of who they're dating. When you open the app, you'll see local men in your area whose pictures have been uploaded. You'll also see if the man was labeled as a red or green flag, and any comments left by other women. You can look up specific names in the search bar and create alerts for names. The app's capabilities aren't limited to comments about a man's "red flags." Tea can also reverse-search photos to catch catfishers through Tea's Catfish Finder AI, run background checks, check for criminal histories and public records and look up phone numbers. Additionally, you can post questions and polls on the Tea app. According to Tea's website, 10% of its profits go to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. How does Tea know if I'm a woman? Not just anyone can join the Tea app -- it's for women only. When you make an account, you'll be asked to provide your location, birth date and a picture of your ID or a selfie to verify that you're a woman. Then you wait to be approved, which people are saying can take days from the influx of new users. The Tea app uses AI to verify your identity and ensure you're a woman. Once approved, you're anonymous apart from the username you choose. Tea uses SafeSip AI as a moderation tool that detects and removes harmful content from the app to ensure it stays a safe space for women. Can I join Tea if I'm not a woman? You can't join the Tea app if you're not a woman. However, uploading a picture to ensure you're a woman is far from a bulletproof way to ensure only women join the app. With filters or AI tools, it's not clear how often Tea catches things like that. What are the security risks of Tea? Tea presents as a safe space to share information because you can't screenshot in the app, you're anonymous and it's verified that all accounts are women. However, the data breach shows us just how fragile something like this can be. Tea confirmed on Friday that there was unauthorized access to its legacy data storage system. Approximately 72,000 images were exposed, including 13,000 images of selfies and photo identification women submitted to make an account, and 59,000 images publicly viewable in the app from posts, comments and direct messages. Tea told CNET that the company has engaged third-party cybersecurity experts to secure its systems. The concept of Tea is to keep women safe and give them a space to share negative experiences so that others don't have to go through the same thing. However, there has also been backlash about whether the app violates men's privacy. On forums like Reddit, some men have shared that posts about them on the app have been false or misleading, and because they're not allowed on the app, they cannot engage to correct the posts. In the same way that it could be a safe place for women to share information to keep each other safe, it could potentially become a space where misinformation runs rampant and personal information is shared. Tea didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the potential for misinformation being spread on its platform, or of the allegations of privacy violations against men. We have also asked Tea whether the platform is heterosexually geared only. Solve the daily Crossword

Rising Fiscal Deficits Drive Billions Into Credit

Yahoo

2 hours ago

Yahoo

Rising Fiscal Deficits Drive Billions Into Credit

(Bloomberg) -- Investors are showing signs of pulling money out of government bonds and plowing it into US and European company debt. Trump Awards $1.26 Billion Contract to Build Biggest Immigrant Detention Center in US The High Costs of Trump's 'Big Beautiful' New Car Loan Deduction Can This Bridge Ease the Troubled US-Canadian Relationship? Trump Administration Sues NYC Over Sanctuary City Policy If the moves persist, money managers could be shifting what for decades has been market orthodoxy: that nothing is safer than buying US government debt. But as US fiscal deficits climb, hurt by tax cuts and rising interest costs, the government may look to borrow more, and company debt may be the safer option. In June, money managers pulled $3.9 billion from Treasuries, while adding $10 billion to European and US investment-grade corporate debt, according to EPFR Global data. In July, investors have added another $13 billion to US high-grade corporates, the largest net client purchasing in data going back to 2015, according to a separate note from strategists at Barclays on Friday. Michaël Nizard, a portfolio manager at Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management, started making the switch from government into corporate debt at the end of last year and is holding on to the position. And in a note in the latest week, BlackRock Inc. strategists wrote, 'Credit has become a clear choice for quality.' To the extent this shift is happening, it's a slow change. The US doesn't have foreign currency debt, and can print more dollars as it needs to. When money managers were alarmed about tariff wars in April, US Treasuries still performed better than corporate bonds, even if prices for both sectors broadly fell. And foreign demand for Treasuries has remained resilient, with holdings climbing in May. But tightening corporate bond spreads in recent months may be a function of government debt looking relatively weaker now. The US government lost its last triple A grade in May, when Moody's Ratings cut it to Aa1. The bond rater pointed to factors including the widening deficit and the rising burden of interest, noting that payments will likely absorb around 30% of revenue by 2035, compared with 18% in 2024 and 9% in 2021. And US President Donald Trump's sweeping tax cut bill could add about $3.4 trillion to US deficits over the next decade, according to projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. At the same time, corporate profits remain relatively strong, and although there are some early reasons for caution, high-grade companies are generally generating enough earnings to easily pay their interest now. More US companies are topping earnings estimates this reporting season than the same period last year. Valuations for company debt have been high recently, reflecting investor demand for the debt. High-grade US corporate spreads have averaged below 0.8 percentage point, or 80 basis points, in July through Thursday. That's far below the mean for the decade of about 120 basis points, according to Bloomberg index data. Spreads for euro-denominated high-grade corporates have averaged about 85 basis points in July, compared with about 123 basis points for the decade. To some money managers, high valuations for corporate credit are cause to be wary. Gershon Distenfeld, a fund manager at AllianceBernstein Holding LP, pared back a position that favored credit risk to rates risk earlier this month. Dominique Braeuninger, a multi-asset fund manager at Schroders Investment Management Ltd., agrees that corporate bond spreads are too tight to make them attractive. And even if BlackRock is generally positive on corporate debt, it is underweight long-term high-grade notes because spreads are tight, while being overweight short-term credit. But to many market observers, the world appears to be shifting, and it makes sense to hold more corporate debt now. 'What we've seen on the government fiscal side is not great news,' said Jason Simpson, a senior fixed income SPDR ETF strategist at State Street Investment Management. 'Corporates seem to be chugging along nicely.' Week In Review The US leveraged loan market saw more than $83 billion of launches in the latest week, the second busiest on record, including a $7.57 billion two-part deal from Medline that is set to be the market's biggest pricing since 2015. Repricings were an important driver of volume, representing about two thirds of the tranches, as companies look to cut borrowing costs. Many of the loans that were repriced had already been repriced before The return of billion-dollar M&A deals was supposed to be a boon for Wall Street's leveraged finance desks. It's turning out to be anything but, as private equity cuts them out of many of the most coveted deals. Lenders are demanding higher pricing from two European leveraged-loan borrowers, a rare sign of difficulty these days in the buoyant market for sub-investment grade debt. Chinese developer Country Garden Holdings Co. has agreed to some key restructuring terms a group of bank creditors had demanded, potentially easing the path for an overall debt deal. PepsiCo Inc. sold $4.7 billion of bonds in a pair of offerings that included the longest-dated euro-denominated corporate new issue since February. FedEx Corp. followed Pepsi with a rare two-part euro debt sale as some of its existing notes in the single currency near maturity. Meanwhile, General Electric Co. sold $2 billion of investment-grade bonds, as did Lockheed Martin Corp. Saks Global Enterprises launched a debt exchange after weeks of negotiations with creditors as its $600 million fresh financing takes shape. Separately, Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. launched a multi-currency debt tender. Banks led by UBS Group and Citigroup have offloaded about $2 billion of debt to support Patient Square Capital's acquisition of Patterson Cos., reviving a deal more than three months after the bonds and loans got stuck on their books due to tariff turmoil in the market. Patterson received about $1 billion of orders for the $500 million junk-bond part of the sale. Dog walking service Wag! Group Co. won court permission to try to slash debt and hand control to senior creditor Retriever LLC as early as next month. On the Move Carlyle Group Inc. recruited Alex Chi, who was most recently co-head of Americas private credit at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s asset management arm, to lead its direct lending business. Chi will join Carlyle in early 2026. BMO Capital Markets hired Nii Dodoo as head of private credit financing. Dodoo joins from BTIG, where he was a managing director. Christina Chan, BNP Paribas' regional head of loan sales and head of corporate loan syndicate, Asia Pacific, has left the bank. Toronto-Dominion Bank's US credit trading unit has re-hired Sarah Classen from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for its voice-trading business. Classen starts in mid-September as a director in TD Securities' global US dollar fixed income trading team, based in New York. Ares Management Corp. hired Sarah Cole as a partner and co-head of Ares Global Capital Solutions to bolster its partnerships with banks, insurance companies and across capital markets broadly. Hedge fund Squarepoint Capital LLP recruited Nathan Fabius, a former strategist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., to cover Latin American debt. Fabius joined Squarepoint this month and is based in New York. Jefferies Financial Group Inc. plans to double the number of people on its credit secondaries team by the end of 2025, as demand has surged from investors who want to buy and sell existing exposure amid a dearth of fresh deals. Ardagh Group SA creditors are set to pay billionaire owner Paul Coulson as much as $300 million as part of a deal to hand over the keys to the company. Burning Man Is Burning Through Cash Confessions of a Laptop Farmer: How an American Helped North Korea's Wild Remote Worker Scheme It's Not Just Tokyo and Kyoto: Tourists Descend on Rural Japan Elon Musk's Empire Is Creaking Under the Strain of Elon Musk A Rebel Army Is Building a Rare-Earth Empire on China's Border ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. 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Yahoo

2 hours ago

Yahoo

Rising Fiscal Deficits Drive Billions Into Credit

(Bloomberg) -- Investors are showing signs of pulling money out of government bonds and plowing it into US and European company debt. Trump Awards $1.26 Billion Contract to Build Biggest Immigrant Detention Center in US The High Costs of Trump's 'Big Beautiful' New Car Loan Deduction Can This Bridge Ease the Troubled US-Canadian Relationship? Trump Administration Sues NYC Over Sanctuary City Policy If the moves persist, money managers could be shifting what for decades has been market orthodoxy: that nothing is safer than buying US government debt. But as US fiscal deficits climb, hurt by tax cuts and rising interest costs, the government may look to borrow more, and company debt may be the safer option. In June, money managers pulled $3.9 billion from Treasuries, while adding $10 billion to European and US investment-grade corporate debt, according to EPFR Global data. In July, investors have added another $13 billion to US high-grade corporates, the largest net client purchasing in data going back to 2015, according to a separate note from strategists at Barclays on Friday. Michaël Nizard, a portfolio manager at Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management, started making the switch from government into corporate debt at the end of last year and is holding on to the position. And in a note in the latest week, BlackRock Inc. strategists wrote, 'Credit has become a clear choice for quality.' To the extent this shift is happening, it's a slow change. The US doesn't have foreign currency debt, and can print more dollars as it needs to. When money managers were alarmed about tariff wars in April, US Treasuries still performed better than corporate bonds, even if prices for both sectors broadly fell. And foreign demand for Treasuries has remained resilient, with holdings climbing in May. But tightening corporate bond spreads in recent months may be a function of government debt looking relatively weaker now. The US government lost its last triple A grade in May, when Moody's Ratings cut it to Aa1. The bond rater pointed to factors including the widening deficit and the rising burden of interest, noting that payments will likely absorb around 30% of revenue by 2035, compared with 18% in 2024 and 9% in 2021. And US President Donald Trump's sweeping tax cut bill could add about $3.4 trillion to US deficits over the next decade, according to projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. At the same time, corporate profits remain relatively strong, and although there are some early reasons for caution, high-grade companies are generally generating enough earnings to easily pay their interest now. More US companies are topping earnings estimates this reporting season than the same period last year. Valuations for company debt have been high recently, reflecting investor demand for the debt. High-grade US corporate spreads have averaged below 0.8 percentage point, or 80 basis points, in July through Thursday. That's far below the mean for the decade of about 120 basis points, according to Bloomberg index data. Spreads for euro-denominated high-grade corporates have averaged about 85 basis points in July, compared with about 123 basis points for the decade. To some money managers, high valuations for corporate credit are cause to be wary. Gershon Distenfeld, a fund manager at AllianceBernstein Holding LP, pared back a position that favored credit risk to rates risk earlier this month. Dominique Braeuninger, a multi-asset fund manager at Schroders Investment Management Ltd., agrees that corporate bond spreads are too tight to make them attractive. And even if BlackRock is generally positive on corporate debt, it is underweight long-term high-grade notes because spreads are tight, while being overweight short-term credit. But to many market observers, the world appears to be shifting, and it makes sense to hold more corporate debt now. 'What we've seen on the government fiscal side is not great news,' said Jason Simpson, a senior fixed income SPDR ETF strategist at State Street Investment Management. 'Corporates seem to be chugging along nicely.' Week In Review The US leveraged loan market saw more than $83 billion of launches in the latest week, the second busiest on record, including a $7.57 billion two-part deal from Medline that is set to be the market's biggest pricing since 2015. Repricings were an important driver of volume, representing about two thirds of the tranches, as companies look to cut borrowing costs. Many of the loans that were repriced had already been repriced before The return of billion-dollar M&A deals was supposed to be a boon for Wall Street's leveraged finance desks. It's turning out to be anything but, as private equity cuts them out of many of the most coveted deals. Lenders are demanding higher pricing from two European leveraged-loan borrowers, a rare sign of difficulty these days in the buoyant market for sub-investment grade debt. Chinese developer Country Garden Holdings Co. has agreed to some key restructuring terms a group of bank creditors had demanded, potentially easing the path for an overall debt deal. PepsiCo Inc. sold $4.7 billion of bonds in a pair of offerings that included the longest-dated euro-denominated corporate new issue since February. FedEx Corp. followed Pepsi with a rare two-part euro debt sale as some of its existing notes in the single currency near maturity. Meanwhile, General Electric Co. sold $2 billion of investment-grade bonds, as did Lockheed Martin Corp. Saks Global Enterprises launched a debt exchange after weeks of negotiations with creditors as its $600 million fresh financing takes shape. Separately, Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. launched a multi-currency debt tender. Banks led by UBS Group and Citigroup have offloaded about $2 billion of debt to support Patient Square Capital's acquisition of Patterson Cos., reviving a deal more than three months after the bonds and loans got stuck on their books due to tariff turmoil in the market. Patterson received about $1 billion of orders for the $500 million junk-bond part of the sale. Dog walking service Wag! Group Co. won court permission to try to slash debt and hand control to senior creditor Retriever LLC as early as next month. On the Move Carlyle Group Inc. recruited Alex Chi, who was most recently co-head of Americas private credit at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s asset management arm, to lead its direct lending business. Chi will join Carlyle in early 2026. BMO Capital Markets hired Nii Dodoo as head of private credit financing. Dodoo joins from BTIG, where he was a managing director. Christina Chan, BNP Paribas' regional head of loan sales and head of corporate loan syndicate, Asia Pacific, has left the bank. Toronto-Dominion Bank's US credit trading unit has re-hired Sarah Classen from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for its voice-trading business. Classen starts in mid-September as a director in TD Securities' global US dollar fixed income trading team, based in New York. Ares Management Corp. hired Sarah Cole as a partner and co-head of Ares Global Capital Solutions to bolster its partnerships with banks, insurance companies and across capital markets broadly. Hedge fund Squarepoint Capital LLP recruited Nathan Fabius, a former strategist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., to cover Latin American debt. Fabius joined Squarepoint this month and is based in New York. Jefferies Financial Group Inc. plans to double the number of people on its credit secondaries team by the end of 2025, as demand has surged from investors who want to buy and sell existing exposure amid a dearth of fresh deals. Ardagh Group SA creditors are set to pay billionaire owner Paul Coulson as much as $300 million as part of a deal to hand over the keys to the company. Burning Man Is Burning Through Cash Confessions of a Laptop Farmer: How an American Helped North Korea's Wild Remote Worker Scheme It's Not Just Tokyo and Kyoto: Tourists Descend on Rural Japan Elon Musk's Empire Is Creaking Under the Strain of Elon Musk A Rebel Army Is Building a Rare-Earth Empire on China's Border ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. 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It seems the big three US carriers are skipping out on the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE

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Tea Is the Top Free App Right Now. What It Is and Why So Many Women Are Using It

Rising Fiscal Deficits Drive Billions Into Credit

Rising Fiscal Deficits Drive Billions Into Credit

It seems the big three US carriers are skipping out on the Galaxy Z Flip 7 FE

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Try Our AI Features

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Related Articles

Tea Is the Top Free App Right Now. What It Is and Why So Many Women Are Using It

Rising Fiscal Deficits Drive Billions Into Credit

Rising Fiscal Deficits Drive Billions Into Credit

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