Tea App hacked days after becoming top free app on Apple's App Store - over 72,000 images leaked

[usonian]

impacting women seeking safety
The firm said that the breach only affects users who signed up before February 2024,

Read more at:
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/tea-app-hacked-news-tea-app-hacked-days-after-becoming-top-free-app-on-apples-app-store-over-72000-images-leaked-data-breach-news-tea-app-news/articleshow/122913886.cms

Tea app hacked: Thousands of women who joined the Tea app looking for safety and solidarity are now facing a nightmare. On Friday, the company confirmed that hackers breached its system and leaked more than 72,000 images, including 13,000 government-issued IDs and verification selfies, as per an NBC News report. Another 59,000 images publicly viewable in the app from posts, comments, and direct messages were also accessed without authorization after being hacked, as reported by AP.

AP reported that 404 Media, which earlier reported about the breach, said it was 4Chan users who discovered an exposed database that “allowed anyone to access the material” from the Tea app. 404 Media wrote, “While reporting this story, a URL the 4chan user posted included a voluminous list of specific attachments associated with the Tea app. 404 Media saw this list of files. In the last hour or so, that page was locked down, and now returns a 'Permission denied' error,” as quoted by AP.

What Was the Tea App Designed For?
Tea was designed as a private space for women to talk about men, a kind of virtual whisper network where users could upload photos, search for men by name, and leave comments describing them as “red flags” or “green flags,” as reported by NBC News.

The app blocked screenshots and required users to verify their identity by submitting selfies, which Tea claimed were deleted after review, according to the NBC News report. Now, the very process that was meant to protect women is the reason many feel exposed.

The company is furiously securing its systems, but once data is gone, it's gone, to the vast maw called the web.

My adage is: any data that leaves your home is likely to be harvested. Very little is encrypted in storage, and hackers get the keys, sometimes by just asking the help desk to hand them over.

https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/07/how-do-hackers-get-passwords-sometimes-they-just-ask/

After $380M hack, Clorox sues its “service desk” vendor for simply giving out passwords

"Cognizant was not duped by any elaborate ploy or sophisticated hacking techniques," says the lawsuit, using italics to indicate outrage emphasis. "The cybercriminal just called the Cognizant Service Desk, asked for credentials to access Clorox’s network, and Cognizant handed the credentials right over. Cognizant is on tape handing over the keys to Clorox’s corporate network to the cybercriminal—no authentication questions asked."

[msongs]

1. some people have not learned nothing on the internet is secure nt

[still-prayin4rain]

2. Yikes

[niyad]

3. I listened to a podcast earlier today that a friend forwarded from fb.

As I listened to the podcast, my first, instinctive, gut-reaction response was, "why in the f'n hell would women who want to be safe turn over their personal information to an unknown man online??? "

I am not a tech savvy person, and it sounded completely bogus to me, so what am I missing here?