The embattled Tea app is back.
Months after being removed from Apple’s App Store in light of major data breaches, the app that allows women to share anonymous Yelp-style reviews of men is relaunching with a new website designed to help women “access dating guardrails without limitation,” Tea’s head of trust and safety Jessica Dees told WIRED.
The app, which launched in 2023 and went viral last summer, getting to number 1 on the iOS App Store, lets users post photos of men while also pointing out red flags, such as if they are already partnered or registered sex offenders. But just as its popularity skyrocketed, it suffered from data leaks that exposed users’ personal information. While the company claims it has boosted its security features, experts tell WIRED there’s still plenty of reason to be cautious.
The new site features “meaningful improvements” intended to bolster security, including “tightening internal safeguards, reinforcing access controls, and expanding review and monitoring processes to better protect sensitive information,” Dees claimed in an email. The company has also partnered with a third-party verification vendor to ensure that users are women—part of an “eligibility check.” During the sign-up process users are given the option to take a selfie video recording or submit a selfie photo with a government ID, which is then processed by the third-party system. “Our community’s trust is something we treat with real seriousness and we’ve invested deeply in building the right expertise and systems,” Dees said.
Courtesy of TEA
Courtesy of TEA
In addition to the website, Tea has added new features on its Android app, including an in-app AI dating coach that provides advice for different dating scenarios and a chat analysis capability, called Red Flag Radar AI, set to launch in the coming months, that can surface potential warning signs in suitors. “In both cases, AI is designed to supplement community insight and can help inform a community member’s point of view on something they might not be sure about,” Dees said. (Tea remains unavailable in the Apple App Store.)
Tea’s founder, Sean Cook, created the app after the “terrifying” online dating experience his mother had gone through—she was catfished and “unknowingly” communicated with “men who had criminal records,” according to the site. In a news release, the company said, “Tea’s rapid rise has brought the complexities of online dating into the global cultural conversation.”
On July 25, Tea suffered a data breach that revealed users’ photos, driver’s licenses, home addresses, direct messages, and other private documentation, 404 Media first reported. The leak, according to a statement from the company, exposed 72,000 images, including 13,000 selfies and photos of people’s IDs, and 59,000 images from posts, comments, and direct messages, some of which were posted on 4Chan and Reddit. Days later, 404 Media reported a second breach affecting 1.1 million users, exposing “messages between users discussing abortions, cheating partners, and phone numbers they sent to one another,” putting the safety and privacy of its women users at even greater risk.
The controversy sparked a fierce debate online about privacy rights and gender-based violence women are often subjected to while using dating apps. It also led to the creation of TeaOnHer, a rival male version of the Tea app that lets men post anonymously about women. Both apps were removed from the App Store following complaints about policy violations, privacy concerns, and content moderation issues. Tea was slapped with 10 potential class action lawsuits in federal and state courts, alleging breach of implied contract and negligence. In one of the lawsuits, a woman alleged that Tea failed “to properly secure and safeguard … personally identifiable information.”
