Ever wanted there to be an app built just for women where they can talk freely about anything and anyone with men’s intervention? Well, that did exist, and things were good for about 3 years until everything came crashing down about 3 days ago. Tea app was a women-only app that was used to safely verify identities. The app fell victim to a mass data breach recently, and here’s all you need to know about the incident.
What Was The Tea App
The Tea App was launched in 2023, and the main use for the app was to trade warnings about the men, women who dated or had encounters. While supporters of the app say that the Tea App was used as a way for women to look out for one another, others said that it weaponised gossip and was a platform encouraging doxxing and defamation. Once inside, users could submit photos or phone numbers of men they’d dated, browse community-generated warnings and receive alerts about nearby flagged individuals.
Tea App’s Data Leak
In July 2025, a 4chan user discovered a flaw in the Tea app’s backend and exposed over 70,000 of the app’s users’ photos and IDs. A selfie or a government ID was required for verification to register for the app. The data leak immediately went viral on X and Reddit. People soon found out that the data also included the geographical location of the users.
Soon, some people converted the Tea app’s leaked data into searchable locations on Google Maps. Thousands of women’s locations were exposed. Out of those, some women were discovered to be military officials or government workers.
However, this wasn’t the end. People also created a website titled TeaSpill, a crowdsourced ranking platform that lets users vote on leaked selfies from the Tea app. People started ranking the faces of the women whose selfies were leaked during the data breach.
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Overall, the incident caused massive outrage, thousands of women’s safety was compromised, and they were turned into a laughing stock. What started as a place for women to look out for each other turned into a nightmare for them.
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