A public S3 bucket? Whoever used the app should start a class action lawsuit, this is beyond misconduct.
Imagine the other gaping security holes in this thing if storing all the data on a public s3 bucket flew under the radar until after release.
It was literally just a gossip site. Glad it got what it deserved, even if 4channers suck. The male version of this got shut down too.
Gossip sites suck, but nobody deserves to get their data leaked.
How do you think anyone who had their face and details posted by a vindictive ex feels? Yeah nobody does, but I feel less devestated when it was already happening from them against people.
Just curious, what was the male version?
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.
4channer try not be bigoted for 1 nanosecond challenge (IMPOSSIBLE) (GONE SEXUAL)
Gives me no pleasure to add it to idcaboutprivacy
Free and open source—feel free to contribute.
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
Uh… What’s the tea app?
Edit: from what I can gather based on the last link attached to this post it seems to be some kind of app for women to talk about men they’ve dated. Why that needs drivers license uploads is a whole other question and definitely should have raised some massive red flags for anyone thinking about using it.
“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 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
Oh hey look, the straw man is waving at you
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.
The reason that up until now an app like that hasn’t existed is because it is an absolutely awful idea if you spend more than 10 seconds thinking about it.
It’s ripe for abuse in fact I would be surprised if even half of the reports are legitimate. Isn’t absolutely god awful system and whoever thought this up is an absolute prat, who seriously needs to get outside and actually experience real life and real people.
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
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?
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.
What about people who don’t use this app, do they not deserve to be protected, do they deserve to suffer because they didn’t use this app?
Let’s be real, this app is about gossip, it’s not about protecting women and keeping them safe, it’s literally in the name it’s about “spilling the tea” aka gossip.
As usual on Lemmy, the answer is just for women to shut up and listen to what the men want
I mean. A social database I feel is toxic in of itself. It’s makes forgiveness harder, it makes changing yourself harder. What’s the point in changing if people are gonna look you up in a database like this and perhaps forevermore treat you as if you are like that in the present day, forever. It assumes that humans are unchanging, that once a shitty person always a shitty person.
It’s gossip and toxic. Have you not seen what these places are on Facebook?
Sucks that it has to
It doesn’t have to.
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.
None of the driver licenses shown in the screenshot are UK style.
No idea why they were collecting identification then.
Even worse, since the hackers got a bunch of the data at once, the company must have held onto those pictures long after they registered people to their service, which they likely didn’t need to do.
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.
Actually UK licenses are pink. Provisionals are green
Almost 250k petition votes now, 150k more votes in the past day alone.
Oh, so they started requiring that in the last couple days?
The app required ID uploads ostensibly to verify that you were a woman signing up, men were not allowed to join for obvious reasons
Aside from the fact that it was stored in a public database, there’s no need to store photos of the IDs at all. The account can just be marked as verified and move on.
Also I doubt that measure would keep a man out if he really wanted to join…
I can’t wait till I read a similar article about porn sites; especially one where the doxxed individuals are politicians.
I mean, we kinda already ended up there with the Ashley Madison hack in 2015. Problems with that site aside, I feel like it’s kinda the blueprint for everything wrong with companies that retain personally identifable info on folks. If a company collects details like your driver’s license, it’s not a question of if it gets out but when. There’s just no way to collect that sort of data and truly keep it safe.
But, it seems like we’ve kinda forgotten how to learn lessons in the modern day, so I’m sure this was an isolated issue and we’ll never see it’s like again.
(/s on that last part, just in case that wasn’t blindingly obvious.)
Friendly reminder that some services do need your ID otherwise they cannot help you or at least they need to very you (accountants, notaries, etc)
edit: I can´t do your tax report if I 1 don´t identify you and 2 I don’t have the social security for which I need to do the report
Iirc, it’s so that only women can join the app.
Which is not a good reason to upload photos of drivers licenses.
Oh, agreed, it’s just some gatekeeping process for sure.
also fucking AirBnB
They generally don´t need it though
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 mean this is just writing a script to access a public database, this is not even exploiting a code vulnerability. So there is an area between digital number waterfalls on the screen and accessing a public database which I would consider more of hacking.
Whoopsie. What goes around comes around.
What use is American personal info to a German anon?
!["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}