Uh… What’s the tea app?
Found this article after a quick web search: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2025/07/24/what-is-tea-the-viral-women-only-app-with-1-million-downloads/
It’s an app where women upload photos of men they’re dating to get “the tea” on them (red flags, catfishing, etc.). I always wondered if something like this existed. Sucks that it has to, sucks even more if their users are being targeted like this.
Talk about adding to the toxic nature of the world. Anyone thinking we should have a digital record of social reputation isn’t thinking it through.
It’s a reaction to the toxic nature of the world, what it adds is a drop in the bucket in exchange for avoiding abusers
If this was an app where men post photos of women without their permission, you would he losing your mind over how gross it is.
Women aren’t routinely abusing men with dating apps so yeah I would be weirded out lmao
Jesus you definitely need to get out more.
Women aren’t routinely abusing men with dating apps
Lmao
Strong disagree. Just creating another bully culture.
What’s the alternative to warning strangers about predators?
Contacting police?
I hear that, I just don’t think this is the way to go about it. Digital reputation system that lives on some corporate dataset is just ripe for terrible problems. It’s terrible for everyone’s privacy when we normalize this shit.
As usual on Lemmy, the answer is just for women to shut up and listen to what the men want
Just goes to show how lost you are in your feminist supremacy bubble, that even leftist spaces like lemmy think this thing is creepy.
This already happened in my country, Secret was an app that got huge while I was finishing high school, an anonymous platform for people to confess private stuff, it rapidly became bully culture and libel central.
But are they abusers? You sure they ain’t just getting revenge on an ex, making them undateable. How do you even validate this information?
It’s gossip and toxic. Have you not seen what these places are on Facebook?
The original incarnation on Facebook got sued for posting libel and shut down. There’s no judge of truth on these apps it’s all she said and no he said.
Sucks that it has to
It doesn’t have to.
“talk”
They try to get a pass on this by saying it’s about “safety” and reporting creeps. But it’s filled with women posting dudes and gossip. It gives me the same vibes as those sites back in the day that were shut down because they were essentially Tennent revenge porn sites. Same shit different form.
Yes, trying to warn other women about a man you dated who abused you or gave off weird vibes is definitely the same as getting your nudes or porn video of yourself leaked against your will onto the public internet for everyone to see
Yea cause that’s what these sites totally were doing.
Everyone knows what these places were. 4chan are fucking scumbags but so are the people using these gossip sites. They’re both cut from the same cloth
The drivers license thing is likely due to a law passed by the UK a few days ago requires all mature content to be behind an age check. And not a “Are you 18: Yes / No”, more like “we will check using ID and photos of you”.
It’s the most hated piece of legislation in a while, with already 100 000 petition votes in 3 days to repeal it.
Oh yes the famous state of Colorado UK.
UK driving licences do not look like that, they don’t have US states on them (major clue), are green, and if the person in the photo actually looks like a living human and not corpse, it gets sent back as unacceptable.
None of the driver licenses shown in the screenshot are UK style.
The app required ID uploads ostensibly to verify that you were a woman signing up, men were not allowed to join for obvious reasons
Damn, if they had PII in a public bucket like that it’s criminally negligent. Well, at least it should be but I’m no lawyer
It’s at least a hefty fine in the EU - enough to kill a business.
The higher of €20m or 4% of global annual turnover.
Indeed, and the kicker is that 4% is on turnover, not profit. That can really hurt.
Yeah it has to be that way otherwise all these venture capital funded businesses that never actually make a profit could just do whatever they want, and considering that’s basically every startup it would essentially neuter to the law.
Thatsthepoint.jpg
Ah publicly exposed bucket. Tale as old as time.
4channer try not be bigoted for 1 nanosecond challenge (IMPOSSIBLE) (GONE SEXUAL)
Yeah there was absolutely no need to include unfounded racist shit about “DEI hires” but it seems to be some sort of rule in 4chan that you have to be a bigoted fucknut in order to post
Gives me no pleasure to add it to idcaboutprivacy
Free and open source—feel free to contribute.
Nice site you got there! Made from scratch or using some service/app?
Thanks. Built from scratch.
well isn’t that just ironic
So like, when do we get a government-run service to issue zero-knowledge proofs about us so companies have no reason to store stuff like this in the first place?
It either doesn’t work or means that they have your ID info anyways. There’s no 3rd option
Oh aye, I am the #1 government truster, they should “not record” where I visit and should be trusted to ignore my internet history
If I had to choose between a government and a private entity to store my personal governmental records (e.g. age and name), I’d 100% choose the government first.
easy to say, but that depends entirely on the government and company doesn’t it?
As always life is complicated.
I am talking about my personal situation.^(Do I really need to put a disclaimer to all posts, that mentions all comments are from my own view and might no apply to every situation in every country?)
They wouldn’t see what sites you give the tokens to — unless those sites choose to phone home, for some reason.
- You log in to the government site
- You ask for a token to prove your age/gender/whatever
- You copy the token
- You go to the age/gender-restricted site
- You provide the token
- The restricted site asks the government site how to verify any arbitrary token (but doesn’t mention your specific token)
- The restricted site verifies the token
Someone spilt the tea…
Woah, I just got an ad for this today, and was intrigued enough to see what their monetization model was (in app purchases/subscriptions for “pro” features) and took a big pass on it.
Horrible practices by this app yes still can’t help but feel anon seems to think he is a hacker for writing a python script to scrape a public database. Also scold app devs for not dealing with sensitive information carefully, release them in the most vile online platform possible so you can boast about your average python scripting skills?
That’s exactly what hacking is.
'90s hacking movies may have given you a different idea of what cybersecurity looks like, but this is what the real world is like
Also, Google deserves a scolding here. Firebase’s default configuration is absolutely atrocious. One of the few critical vulnerabilities I’ve seen where the system is working as intended. Dubbed the hospital gown vuknerability because they leave the backend wide open by default
Firebase’s default configuration
I’m going to get on my grumpy old man soapbox. I understand making things idiot proof for end users. End users are idiots. But do we have to make things super safe for developers now too? Do we want to add a warning to rm so we don’t accidentally remove the wrong directory?
Any developer who doesn’t know to check permissions and accessibility on their database deserves to have their AI vibe coding bot taken away.
I understand the reasoning for the public intent of the app and would generally support it within reason cause society right now amirite… but its not so subtle real world application has now leaked a DB of catty women for whom the majority ALSO show massive red flags. This isn’t a sexist men vs women critique, if there was an app for men to rate women and dox them I’d feel the same way. Love it when shitty people bamboozle themselves.
I mean it’s even in the app name that it’s not about protecting women and keeping them safe, it’s literally about “spilling the tea” aka gossip. It’s pretty gross and can be used for nonconsenual sharing of images and even slander too since there’s no way to know if what someone is writing on there about someone is true or not.
What use is American personal info to a German anon?
Congrats, dumbest take you could have on this.
!["Tea" app - user database leaked today (incl. drivers license & IDs). Daily reminder not to give your ID to online services [THEY DO NOT PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION]](https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/82b85434-7879-471f-b645-e6a7281e3baf.webp){kind=link}