An app that helps women identify problematic men became a target for hackers. Over 70,000 images, including selfies and driver's licenses, were leaked to 4chan.
The dating app Tea, which allows women to warn each other about "red flags" in men, suffered a major data breach last week. According to 404 Media, hackers from the 4chan forum managed to access 72,000 images from the app's database, of which 13,000 were selfies and driver's license photos.
The app was created by software developer Sean Cook, inspired by his mother's "terrifying" dating experiences. Tea has over four million active users and topped Apple's App Store last week.
Careless data handling
The company stored sensitive user data on Google's cloud service Firebase, where the information became accessible to unauthorized parties. Several cybersecurity experts have criticized the company's methods as "careless".
— A company should never host users’ private data on a publicly accessible server, says Grant Ho, professor at the University of Chicago, to The Verge.
Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, law professor at George Washington University, warns that digital "whisper networks" lose control over sensitive information.
— What changes when it’s digital and recoverable and save-able and searchable is you lose control over it, he says.
Tea has launched an investigation together with external cybersecurity companies.
