Tea, a dating app aiming to empower women by allowing them to anonymously ask and warn about men they've encountered, achieved top rankings in the U.S. Apple App Store. However, the company confirmed a security breach where thousands of images, including selfies, were leaked. The founder, Sean Cook, created Tea after witnessing dangerous dating experiences faced by his mother. The app allows women to vet potential partners, but the recent hack raises concerns about privacy and safety in online dating.
Tea founder Sean Cook, a software engineer who previously worked at Salesforce and Shutterfly, says on the app's website that he founded the company in 2022 after witnessing his own mother's "terrifying" experiences. Cook said they included unknowingly dating men with criminal records and being "catfished" - deceived by men using false identities.
Tea markets itself as a safe way for women to anonymously vet men they might meet on dating apps such as Tinder or Bumble - ensuring that the men are who they say they are, not criminals and not already married or in a relationship. "It's like people have their own little Yelp pages," said...
We have engaged third-party cybersecurity experts and are working around the clock to secure our systems," San Francisco-based Tea Dating Advice Inc. said in a statement.
In an Apple Store review, one woman wrote that she used a Tea search to investigate a man she'd begun talking to and discovered "over 20 red flags, including serious allegations like assault and recording women without their consent." She said she cut off communication.
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