this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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Women Dating Safety App 'Tea' Breached, Users' IDs Posted to 4chan (www.404media.co)
submitted 6 months ago by bytesonbike@discuss.online to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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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[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 99 points 6 months ago (15 children)

I can't open the article, but I think I read that this was hosted on an unprotected bucket. Assuming that's correct I wouldn't say this was a breach. A better headline would be "Women dating safety app 'Tea' exposed women's PII".

To be 100% clear, I'm not excusing the hackers. I don't believe it's morally correct to publicize something because it is exposed. For folks curious about that you can look into how to ethically disclose vulnerabilities. I still view this as doxxing. I still believe what the hackers did should be a criminal offense, it's just that I also believe the app holds a ton of the blame as well. How can you proclaim to be about keeping women safe while putting them at risk? That should be punished as well.

Like if the storage facility you trusted to hold your stuff never had locks on the doors, shouldn't they take a lot of the blame as well as the thief who found out a door was unlocked?

[–] teslasaur@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Soft rules have never applied to the internet.

Things that you wouldn't do afk, just because "those are the rules", doesn't apply when every empathy damaged person in the world with an internet connection can break them.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 points 6 months ago

Well said.

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