Technology

Tea is the offshoot of all those "Are We Dating The Same Guy" Facebook groups where ladies gossip, talk shit, slander and creep-shame guys they went on dates with, sometimes throwing around false accusations maliciously to get men ostracized.

On one hand, damn these groups are toxic as fuck and that makes me feel a lot less sympathetic. But on the other hand, this is a textbook argument for why mandatory age verification laws need to be abolished. AWDTSG works as a way to keep women safe when it's used as intended but there are too many women that will slander men with false allegations purely out of spite.

This is what happens when you decide to vibecode a service with zero attention to safety or web development. This is why you don't immediately jump onto a new service without it being vetted properly. Now one of the worst communities on the Internet is in possession of over a hundred thousand women's driving licenses and faces. This is going to be an absolute disaster.

People sign up to app intended to share personal information about others without their permission, end up having their own personal information shared without permission - the irony is impressive.

I would not under any circumstances give my drivers license to a for profit app. I don’t even like to give my email.

Wow that was fast.

I did not even know this app existed untill about 8 hours ago.

Already comprimised.

EDIT: Also, lol, this arguably is not even largely a hack.

These idiots just had everything stored in a fucking publically accesible firebase bucket... amazing.

They didn't delete anything they claimed to.

Either way you look at it, anywhere on the spectrum from:

A ] A bunch of women reasonably concerned for their safety

B ] A bunch of gossip mongers

... well, they've now all been doxxed, ironic from each angle.

What a fucking disaster.

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?

Not sure if this is ironic that the users are now less safe after using the safety app. But I still feel bad for the users. Dating is hard enough without the fear of being harmed.

Maybe I'm just getting old, but the idea of "verifying" my real identity to a faceless website or mobile app is abhorrent.

I guess it doesn't help that governments in some countries (UK, Australia that I know of) are encouraging this bullshit with Trojan horse laws claiming to protect children from adult websites / social media.

Can't help but think there is also an element of pot meet kettle here, when users of an app designed to dox and slander people without their knowledge are now the ones getting doxxed themselves.

The replies in this thread are disturbing, giving me a sense that Lemmy has a misogyny problem; maybe I was naïve, but I expected outrage about 4chan doxxing women trying to protect one another, instead I see lots of revenge enjoyment as if being doxxed on 4chan is justice for ... warning one another about dangerous men they encounter when dating?

The inability to empathize and take seriously the threats posed to women or to understand their motivation to protect one another is alarming.

There is no good faith extended, but also no evidence presented that instead of safety the app was just for gossip, it's just taken as assumed that women are wrong for using Tea and they all deserve to be doxxed.

Protecting our users' privacy and data is our highest priority. We are taking every necessary step to ensure the security of our platform

Since sensitive data was put on a public bucket, maybe they meant it was their lowest priority?

My friend came over and told me a story about this crazy date she was on. The guy love bombs her, sets her up with a massage, then in the morning, goes out and eats McDonalds alone and ghosts her. Then repeats every few weeks with love bombs.

I shared that with my discord group and someone said they know that guy too.

Im assuming that's what Tea is for.

No sympathy from me whatsoever. The app was designed to allow these women to anonymously post personal information about other people. Fuck 'em. Turnabout is fair play. As my kindergarten teacher used to say, "you get what you get and you don't pitch a fit".

This is why there should be a nationwide rule that PII data should be deleted after the users identity has been verified