Tea, a ladies’s security courting app that surged to the highest of the free iOS App Retailer listings this week, has been the topic of a serious safety breach. The corporate confirmed Friday that it has “recognized licensed entry to one in every of our techniques” that uncovered hundreds of consumer pictures.
In accordance with Tea’s preliminary findings, the breach allowed entry to roughly 72,000 pictures, damaged down into two teams: 13,000 pictures of selfies and picture identification that individuals had submitted throughout account verification and 59,000 pictures that have been publicly viewable within the app from posts, feedback and direct messages.
These pictures had been in a “legacy information system” that contained info from greater than two years in the past, the corporate stated in assertion. “Right now, there isn’t any proof to recommend that present or further consumer information was affected.”
Earlier on Friday, posts on Reddit and 404 Media reported that Tea app customers’ faces and IDs had been posted on nameless on-line messageboard 4chan.
Tea requires customers to confirm their identities with selfies or IDs, which is why driver’s licenses and photos of individuals’s faces are within the leaked information.
The premise of Tea is to offer ladies with an area to report unfavourable interactions they’ve had whereas encountering males within the courting pool, purportedly to maintain different ladies protected. The app hit the No. 1 spot on Apple’s US App Retailer this week, drawing worldwide consideration and sparking a debate about whether or not the app violates males’s privateness. If the experiences of a breach change into true, it can additionally play into the broader ongoing debate round whether or not on-line id and age verification pose an inherent safety danger to web customers.
Within the privateness part on its web site, Tea says: “Tea Courting Recommendation takes affordable safety measures to guard your Private Data to stop loss, misuse, unauthorized entry, disclosure, alteration and destruction. Please bear in mind, nonetheless, that regardless of our efforts, no safety measures are impenetrable.”
Tea stated it has launched a full investigation to evaluate the scope and affect of the breach.
