- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
Users from 4chan claim to have discovered an exposed database hosted on Google’s mobile app development platform, Firebase, belonging to the newly popular women’s dating safety app Tea. Users say they are rifling through peoples’ personal data and selfies uploaded to the app, and then posting that data online, according to screenshots, 4chan posts, and code reviewed by 404 Media.
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This is why there should be a nationwide rule that PII data should be deleted after the users identity has been verified
What are the chances of this being the main reason for the app’s existence?
Seeing as the word hack is doing a lot of heavy lifting. They didn’t bother to actually secure the data and then put it on the internet for anyone to access.
Hungry data privacy lawyers when they learned about Tea this week:
The replies in this thread are disturbing, giving me a sense that Lemmy has a misogyny problem; maybe I was naïve, but I expected outrage about 4chan doxxing women trying to protect one another, instead I see lots of revenge enjoyment as if being doxxed on 4chan is justice for … <checks notes> warning one another about dangerous men they encounter when dating?
The inability to empathize and take seriously the threats posed to women or to understand their motivation to protect one another is alarming.
There is no good faith extended, but also no evidence presented that instead of safety the app was just for gossip, it’s just taken as assumed that women are wrong for using Tea and they all deserve to be doxxed.
Your comment was on top for me in my app, so I was like “oh how bad could it be.”. Holy shit you’re not wrong, there’s some disgusting comments that are getting voted up.
I’m low-key disappointed and appalled by these community members who believe these women “deserve” it for … Trying to help each other be safer?
saw this happening here, saw it happening in reddit threads on the topic, saw it all over the media cycle in the comments.
i agree, people’s visceral backlash against this app is steeped in a deep misogyny. most of these comments have a vapid absence of any sort of even basic recognition towards these women as people. talking about them like they’re abstract figures or test subjects up in here.
watching people take somewhat valid privacy concerns as an excuse to let loose their most toxic feelings towards women used to be the sort of thing only losers or emboldened megalomaniacs did in public, even just a decade ago.
in the past years i’ve just seen all my peers, regardless of political affiliation, manipulated into a cult of outrage that serves as another hamster wheel upon which capital may spin.
imtiredboss.png
I’m all for groups of safe spaces for women. Especially when it’s designed to keep them safe while dating. I have my doubts that Tea was that. Even if it was advertised as such, “tea” is slang for the word gossip. I’ve heard stories from several sources that it was used to dox people as well. Not saying what happened to the users is right. I think some users here are just feeling smug that this might cause the app to fail or shut down.
The app enables the photos to be run through a reverse image search, enabling them to run a basic background check, check against public sex offender databases, and check for photos that might get flagged as being used in “catfishing” — misrepresenting one’s identity online.
The app also features a “Tea Party Group Chat,” which allows users to directly share information about men, and has a rating function, which allows users to share their experiences with Yelp-style reviews, awarding men a “green flag” or a “red flag.”
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/25/us/tea-app-dating-privacy-cec
It’s a bit like Rate My Professor, but for dating.
Honestly I cyncially expect this kind of app might inevitably exist for rating people of all genders (or that dating apps might incorporate this Uber-style rating system), but the reason this app exists has directly to do with the violence women face from intimate partners.
The point is that men who are enjoying the doxxing of women who have used this app are ignoring the context, or even have a warped sense of the context, as if this is narrowly about (legitimate) privacy concerns and the harms caused by the app.
Even if the concerns about the app are justified, the revenge enjoyment betrays a view much harder to defend, that all the women who used the app are equally cupable, or that doxxing women using the app is equivalent to women doxxing abusive men through the app.
Men are not all equally privileged, but there is a broad inequality both to how violence is distributed and how that plays out in dating situations. Women are not wrong to fear men. One in three women have experienced sexual or physical violence, most of that violence being perpetuated by men.
Since this is the context for the use of this app, it’s not neutral to doxx its users or to claim it’s fair because men feel (legitimate) concerns about the app’s privacy violations.
I agree 100% that women face many more dangers especially in the dating scene than men. I’m all for having resources available for them to remain as safe as possible.
I don’t see how a Rate My Professor type app would work well for dates. I feel like people would only spend the time to rate poor dates. If you had a really good date with someone, you would presumably start dating them so why would you let everyone else know they are a good person to go out with? I have no doubt there are some awful people out there that others should be warned about, but this type of app is a bit too risky to justify that in my opinion.
The background check feature sounds much more legit, but I don’t think a group chat feature needs to exist along side it.
All that being said, anyone enjoying the doxxing of others is just an asshole. There’s definitely nothing fair about it from either side.
yeah, the app has obvious flaws, and the Rate My Professor style approach succeeds or fails depending on the quality of the users and moderators, and could easily be useless or become toxic - either way, I’m not defending this aspect of the app, it’s clearly problematic.
Regardless I understand why women would want a resource like this, and that doesn’t seem true for those in the comments who see the doxxing as deserved for using this app.
Nevermind the rest of the context, like 4chan being a bastion of right-wing, misogynist trolls who would target an app like this for political reasons.
Lemmy users approving 4chan doxxing women is a major red flag … it might have something to do with how many Lemmy users come here due to being banned for their behavior on Reddit. Reddit isn’t sending their best and brightest, and it shows. (This is just my speculation, though.)
Could you share said sources? It’s irrelevant though because justifying this doxxing SHOULD mean that the entirety of 4chan is a justifiable dox target. If you don’t believe that, then you should be against it happening against Tea users. They’re at the very least guilty of the same thing (in this case. 4chan is guilty of much more heinous things than just this).
I 100% agree that it isn’t relevant to the doxxing. I dont think the doxxing is warranted at all from either side. Most of what I saw about the app is just from various social media users as well as the Google PlayStore reviews. Personally I find it hard to believe the app wasn’t made with the purpose to dox people just based on the name alone. The ads make it seem like a safespace for women and if that’s all it was meant to be then it for sure had a very unfortunate name.
Tea could easily be used for two extremely different purposes:
- Legitimate use to inform and protect women from abusive men
- Illegitimate use to spread misinformation (libel!) about men with no verification of truth or reasonable appeal process
The idea of Tea isn’t bad-- I’ve thought about the potential utility of similar apps myself-- but most people who are reacting badly are recognizing that it’s a nearly impossible moderation problem that will be used for bad things too.
of course, the app has obvious problems, but I don’t see that as justifying the gloating and sense of revenge enjoyment happening.
Instead I see a kind of discontent about women I find concerning, which seems ignorant of the widespread violence women experience or what it’s like for women who take risks when dating men.
Men are not all equally problematic or privileged, but they are generally in a position of power relative to women and are acting like the victims here.
They should direct their discontent to patriarchy which creates the situation where violence against women is dismissed or accepted, and which motivates women to use apps to check if the person they are dating has a history of violent behavior.
Patriarchy which perpetuates the narrative that men are natural predators and women natural prey is what victimizes men here, not the women who rightfully fear and feel victimized by the minority of men who are violent.
Why is everything we do, when we band together, seen as suspect and dangerous?
And even if it was purely a gossip app, an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.
“gossip” is for safety. It’s often information that men don’t want shared so it’s painted like it’s bad. Claiming women shouldn’t gossip is just more misogyny.
There is some of that happening, like when women get together and discuss how they’re being treated it’s “gossip” and implied as immoral.
I think some men might read what you’ve said and think you are denying any toxic gossip exists, it’s important to have nuance and not alienate men who otherwise would be allies, but I think overall your point is well taken.
This comment is one hour old, let’s give you my SS and CC info
??
I don’t quite understand the outrage in the thread. I’ve been looking through the comments, trying to see if this ever went beyond gossip and I can’t find anything.
From my understanding the app was intended to be a safe space for women to discuss dating. Relaying information about dangerous individuals, or people who cheat. I can imagine that things might have gotten slightly out of hand in regards to anonymous gossip, but is that anything compared to being doxxed? Besides, women, and men have been gossiping behind each others backs for as long as humans have existed. An anonymous app makes it significantly worse certainly, but it is what it is. This behavior is always going to exist for better or for worse. For example, people already discuss this on sites like fetlife since the risk of ending up with someone who wants to batter you for the sake of battering you is somewhat high there.
Surely we can have some sympathy for people who have had their identifications doxxed by 4chan who haven’t done anything worse than a bit of toxic gossip at most?
you’re right as far it’s intentions go. I honestly couldn’t give a rats ass about what it intended to do what I have a MASSIVE issue with is that it did the EXACT opposite of what it “intended to do.”
It didn’t provide Women with a “safe space” because women’s government issued IDs and their personal selfies were, quite literally, OUT IN THE OPEN. It opened Women who used the app to way more harm.
Their database, and i’m being extremely generous when I call it that, wasn’t even password protected. not even a simple plain text password like “password123” there was NO password. at all. period. All I would have had to do was simply see where the app sent the scanned ID’s, open a terminal, SSH into it WITHOUT A PASSWORD OR KEY, and then I now have access to the IDs of over 13,000 Women. Hell I probably wouldn’t have even had to SSH into it, probably could have opened the damn thing from a web browser.
So when the media is saying 4chan “leaked” this stuff again they’re being generous. It’s like if you were walking down the street that Tea lived on and you noticed they left their door wide open so you decided to peak your head inside and while peaking your head in you noticed a box right by the door that had thousands of IDs in it so you picked up the box and walked out. Chances are other people got to this box before 4chan did, many people probably did, it’s just that 4chan were the only ones to say “Hey I found this house with a wide open door and decided to pick up this box with all these IDs in it, neat huh?”
None of this is what I am discussing. I’m talking about the people in the thread who are saying that these people deserved this.
Are you the only one allowed to bring up points of conversation? Let them say their part
Sorry if that came off the wrong way. I more so meant it to point out what I intended in case there was a misunderstanding.
I had been under the impression that 4chan had also basically died due to their own site getting hacked
That which has no life can never truly die (or something)
the site got hacked and most of the admins were revealed to have .gov emails but everyone pretty much already expected that so nobody actually cared and it’s back to business as usual
Oh my god that’s… So stupid, i hate this time line.
Dirty water that would behave no different if you sifted out the proteins.
Maybe I’m just getting old, but the idea of “verifying” my real identity to a faceless website or mobile app is abhorrent.
I guess it doesn’t help that governments in some countries (UK, Australia that I know of) are encouraging this bullshit with Trojan horse laws claiming to protect children from adult websites / social media.
Can’t help but think there is also an element of pot meet kettle here, when users of an app designed to dox and slander people without their knowledge are now the ones getting doxxed themselves.
California, Utah, Texas all have laws now requiring age verification to use an app store
I’d be interested to know how that works with F-Droid or Aurora.
If you think that’s the same thing, you don’t understand at least on of those things, but safe money is both…
What if they take people’s biometric aka fingerprint and to view nsfw stuff you goota use the biometric and I am not talking about passkey
How does having my fingerprint prove my age.
The issue is, at some point, they have to connect your “digital you” to your self as a real person, after that they can track you, keep tabs on you. If that data was ever stolen, or a corrupt government rose to power, you’re really screwed.
Yeah. If it did.
What if they fucked right off and left parenting what kids do on their devices to their parents?
People sign up to app intended to share personal information about others without their permission, end up having their own personal information shared without permission - the irony is impressive.
I think it depends on people’s intent and purpose for using this service. I’m overall not a fan of someone taking and sharing pictures of me without my consent, or making claims that can’t be defended…
The group of women legitimately using it for safety is fine, in a general sense.
The group of women using it as gossip and entertainment is not.
It makes sense using it for safety, but I would worry about whether all the information on there is accurate. Most of the feedback on the app is probably negative, I doubt anyone would really post anything on Tea that’s positive about their former partner. But people like to believe they are in the right. Someone who got in a fight with their partner might post something on Tea that isn’t accurate, but makes them feel better since they can spin the story how they want, and make the other person at fault. However, unlike regular social media, the person being attacked by their partner on Tea has no idea that it happened, and no way to refute what was said. It promotes the opposite of any type of communication between partners after a fight or breakup. It promotes safety, but at the same time it promotes some toxicity in relationships. What would you think if you knew that if your got into a disagreement with your partner that you could end up posted on this app, without any way of arguing back?
Considering that “tea” is common slang for gossip I’m not convinced there was many of the latter.
At first I was going to call bullshit because I thought you were exaggerating and being ridiculous.
Nope. That’s the app. “Anonymous” sharing of pictures and info of other people. Presumably without their permission. That’s fucked up.
Yeah. I mean, I get it. The concept of the app makes sense. And I would be that, on average, it is/would be used for good.
On the other hand, as a guy, the idea that people are out there sharing reviews of me as a person on the open internet, and I have no way of knowing this, is deeply unsettling. Like, I haven’t done anything wrong - just the whole concept feels very gross.
My problem is how it’s implemented.
An app where you simply post a name and a location, and then people can DM you with their experiences directly, would be a lot less invasive.
Especially because the app is called “tea”, like the slang term for gossip. The letter of the intention may have been good but the whole thing is toxic.
Sucks it’s necessary.
You want women to not just assume youre an insane violent rape monster? Shit like this is how we know. Edit: the women who used this app were the ones who didn’t want to asdume you were all subhuman filth, who wanted to protect themselves from the ‘few bad apples’ without doing splash damage, as they saw it, to the rest of you. And it looks like those naive idiots got proven wrong. There is no way to be safe as a woman or woman categorized person wirh men in your life, except for rare and astounding luck.
Or you could, like, fix your entire gender; idk. I’m still going to hate all of you.
…
k
Bruh
I kniw right? Its pretty fucked, but sometimes belief that people, or even men, are mostly good gets you raped or crawling through a puddle of your own blood with fewer than four functioning limbs.
Cynical bitches like me though; we tend to make it out.
You could ask someone you know to register and share the login, it’s a flawed concept. There’s probably a bunch of partners in there who didn’t even know their boyfriend used their info to create an account to check on themselves.
No sympathy from me whatsoever. The app was designed to allow these women to anonymously post personal information about other people. Fuck 'em. Turnabout is fair play. As my kindergarten teacher used to say, “you get what you get and you don’t pitch a fit”.
If by “personal information” you mean sharing their experiences with certain people … Yeah I guess.
They weren’t sharing addresses and social security numbers or drivers license numbers or other things that would lead to identity theft.
How can you not have sympathy for these women getting doxxed because they wanted to help create a safer space for one another and to help each other out? That’s wild.
This is far from turnabout, this is abuse.
How dare they warn other women about rapists.
Plus the whole moral aspect of such an app. While I agree that women have been mostly objectified their whole existence, this doesn’t help anyone.
We need to get rid of both superficial way of looking at each other ( women: seeking mostly young, beautiful, rich yes men, men: seeking perfect body, face, housewife stereotypes). Both mindsets are equally trash.
Agreed
Real
Wow that was fast.
I did not even know this app existed untill about 8 hours ago.
Already comprimised.
EDIT: Also, lol, this arguably is not even largely a hack.
These idiots just had everything stored in a fucking publically accesible firebase bucket… amazing.
They didn’t delete anything they claimed to.
Either way you look at it, anywhere on the spectrum from:
A ] A bunch of women reasonably concerned for their safety
B ] A bunch of gossip mongers
… well, they’ve now all been doxxed, ironic from each angle.
What a fucking disaster.
if that’s truly how the leak happened then these people, in any reasonable jurisdiction, would be considered criminally negligent, at the least.
yay compsci ethics courses :D
boo courts failing to uphold the law >:(
Hooray two tiered legal system, huzzah!
/s/s/s
Protecting our users’ privacy and data is our highest priority. We are taking every necessary step to ensure the security of our platform
Since sensitive data was put on a public bucket, maybe they meant it was their lowest priority?
This is what happens when you decide to vibecode a service with zero attention to safety or web development. This is why you don’t immediately jump onto a new service without it being vetted properly. Now one of the worst communities on the Internet is in possession of over a hundred thousand women’s driving licenses and faces. This is going to be an absolute disaster.
Now now, I like to shit on vibecoders too but let’s not pretend this is some new problem.
Idiots leave databases on cloud servers exposed all the time rather than deal with their companies often arcane rules for generating certificates
Where do you think the AI learned it?
Like, I get that competent coders do it too, but now any skiddie with an idea can cosplay as a developer so this is going to be so much more prevelant
That’s not new, either.
This is ALSO why no service should ever require or get my driver’s license information. Fuck that. Also, yet another Constance to those who can’t afford a car or want to improve the environment by living car free.
The only site I ever felt comfortable scanning shit like that into was a site that sold things only to military/medics/fire fighters so I had to upload my medic license and my FF cert.
Anything beyond that is a no go from me.
My only exception to that are uber drivers. But then again we live in an age where somehow better help has become popular, even though they sell your data.
I disagree on even that. It should be enough to have some trusted “notary” tick a box that they have verified your driver’s license as valid. It should not be stored out sent anywhere at any time. Just showed to a human. Regularly, if needed.
To be fair, I’m not sure why firebase even has a public access option. That’s a recipe for issues.
Though if it’s anything like Google Cloud Store, they hopefully make it very clear that your bucket is public.
How is something “vetted properly” and how do I find out about that?
This is something I worry about all the time as well, especially since I’ve started to learn how to code and experienced how easy it is to mess up and send a list with all registered users to everyone opening a page. (This was in a test environment.)
As a user, there is no proper way I know of to verify an app’s security. Most apps are closed source, but even if you could view the code, what would you look for?
Both Apple and Google have a verification process for apps that are published in their app stores, but if these worked, we wouldn’t see this happening.
There are academic researchers working on apps and privacy as well, but it’s not like you can ask them for a report on an app you’re thinking of installing.
I think it basically comes down to trust. Check if a developer has messed up in the past and how they dealt with that, that sort of stuff. And for dating apps there is this interesting article: https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2025/06/24/queer-dating-apps-beware-who-you-trust/#reducing-the-risks-when-using-dating-apps
It’s a long read (haven’t fully read it myself yet) and it paints a bleak picture, but that’s the world we live in today.
You wait a while until something like this happens.
I honestly don’t understand what op is talking about.
Leaks happen all the time, even in billion dollar companies.
Their comment is the equivalent like, “This is why you should lock your doors!” Like uh okay.
This was more like leaving all your valuables in a cardboard box on your front lawn. Anyone can just take it, if they care to look inside the complete unsecured box.
Someone just drove up and tossed the box in their truck. No lock involved.
This situation would have been easily preventable with basic understanding of what they’re doing is what OP is saying. This leak is not something highly complex, it is painfully stupid on the side of the developers.
There’s a difference between a hack, where data is exposed, compared to data exposure due to negligence or ignorance on the development side.
Again, how should the end use know anything about what is going on at their end? How does anyone “vett” that? It is a nonsense “argument” to put blame on the users.
Where I’m from there’s certificates a company can get, that confirm a certain level of process and IT security. Also a company existing for at least 5-10 years without incidents is a “vetted” company in my books. At least anything that managed to produce a working IT system before 2021 when AI came around.
I also believe there’s a bit of bad wording going on with the original comment. Take it up with that guy, lol.
I love how people just jump on whatever they like, instead of actually thinking about the stuff they read/comment on/upvote. Exactly like on Reddit, no difference.
“Vibe coded” you just made that up didn’t you, because you don’t like llms. I don’t see anything in the article about “Ai” and this service has been operating for 2 years.
Maybe I shouldn’t have used the term vibe coded. I apologize.
The og 4chan post brought up the vibe coding. Using it as an insult to quality is wider spread than just lemmy.
My thoughts as well. But hey, it’s lemmy! Just accuse someone of doing something we hate, good to go!
I would not under any circumstances give my drivers license to a for profit app. I don’t even like to give my email.
apparently there’s some law in the UK that mandates it now 🙄
Also California
Well UK, have the day you voted for I guess
Unfortunately this is the better of the two main parties. This isn’t republicans winning because dems didn’t vote. Labour won, and this still went through. The UK government as a whole has been on an anti porn brigade for decades. I can’t wait for the day labour and the Tories just die off.
Technically the act passed in 2023 under the Sunak government.
That said; I can’t seem to find a vote breakdown and I would not be at all surprised if labour also backed it.
I’m hoping enough public dissatisfaction leads to labour repealing it but I won’t hold my breath.
I’d like to blame the voting system for the lack of meaningful voting options.
Ed Davey, I can’t imagine Bad Enoch doing anything and Labour were the ones to implement this.
The next PM of this country will be the one who promises to bring back all the porn.
Thank fuck for VPNs, although it now wants to show me hot milfs in Brussels.
Something something Vegemite sandwich
And many republican US states.
Not sure if this is ironic that the users are now less safe after using the safety app. But I still feel bad for the users. Dating is hard enough without the fear of being harmed.
