Teal, A Popoular Women-only Dating Advice App, Goes Dark After Second Cybersecurity Leak

The dating app Tea said it has disabled its direct messaging feature after more than one million private direct messages are leaked on several hacker forums – this is after hackers gained access to a database of over 72,000 images over this past weekend.

The dating advice website, which markets itself as “a secure, anonymous platform” of over 4,647,000 women to dish about the safety amd background of potential dates, posted an update on its website and instagram acount on Tuesday.

The inital breach was originaly discovered on Ju;y 25th, according to a statement by Tea posted on its website.

“A legacy data storage system was compromised, resulting in unauthorized access to a dataset from prior to February 2024," the dating safety advocates said.

“This dataset includes approximately 72,000 images, including approximately 13,000 selfies and photo identification submitted by users during account verification and approximately 59,000 images publicly viewable in the app from posts, comments, and direct messages,” it said.

According to the story, frst reported by 404 media last week, those images were exposed on a database hosted on Firebase that belongs to Tea.

Now 404 media is reporting new information about a second leak that has exposed “much more” Tea user data than initially believed.

An independent security researcher told the media outlet it discovered “it was possible for hackers to access messages between users discussing abortions, cheating partners, and phone numbers they sent to one another. “

The news is a big blow to the women focused company, which has been trying to contain the fallout, launching a full investigation with the help of outside cybersecuriy experts and the FBI.

“We have recently learned that some direct messages (DMs) were accessed as part of the initial incident. Out of an abundance of caution, we have taken the affected system offline,” the company's "teapartygirls" wrote on Instagram in an updated statement.

"At this time, we have found no evidence of access to other parts of our environment," they said, promising to “keep users informed as quickly as possible.

"Please know that our team remains fully engaged in strengthening the Tea App's security," they said.

Committing to strengthening the app's security, Tea said it is currently “working to identify any users whose personal information was involved and will be offering free identity protection services to those individuals.”

While we acknowledge this serious cyber incident, we also acknowledge that Tea is needed now more than ever, noting the company’s mission to “empower, support, and amplify the voices of women navigating the modern dating world.”