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.
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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This is ALSO why no service should ever require or get my driver's license information. Fuck that. Also, yet another Constance to those who can't afford a car or want to improve the environment by living car free.
My only exception to that are uber drivers. But then again we live in an age where somehow better help has become popular, even though they sell your data.
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Now now, I like to shit on vibecoders too but let’s not pretend this is some new problem.
Idiots leave databases on cloud servers exposed all the time rather than deal with their companies often arcane rules for generating certificates
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To be fair, I’m not sure why firebase even has a public access option. That’s a recipe for issues.
Though if it’s anything like Google Cloud Store, they hopefully make it very clear that your bucket is public.
How is something "vetted properly" and how do I find out about that?
You wait a while until something like this happens.
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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.
At first I was going to call bullshit because I thought you were exaggerating and being ridiculous.
Nope. That's the app. "Anonymous" sharing of pictures and info of other people. Presumably without their permission. That's fucked up.
Yeah. I mean, I get it. The concept of the app makes sense. And I would be that, on average, it is/would be used for good.
On the other hand, as a guy, the idea that people are out there sharing reviews of me as a person on the open internet, and I have no way of knowing this, is deeply unsettling. Like, I haven't done anything wrong - just the whole concept feels very gross.
Especially because the app is called "tea", like the slang term for gossip. The letter of the intention may have been good but the whole thing is toxic.
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I think it depends on people's intent and purpose for using this service. I'm overall not a fan of someone taking and sharing pictures of me without my consent, or making claims that can't be defended...
The group of women legitimately using it for safety is fine, in a general sense.
The group of women using it as gossip and entertainment is not.
Considering that "tea" is common slang for gossip I'm not convinced there was many of the ~~latter~~ former.
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I would not under any circumstances give my drivers license to a for profit app. I don’t even like to give my email.
apparently there's some law in the UK that mandates it now 🙄
Well UK, have the day you voted for I guess
Unfortunately this is the better of the two main parties. This isn't republicans winning because dems didn't vote. Labour won, and this still went through. The UK government as a whole has been on an anti porn brigade for decades. I can't wait for the day labour and the Tories just die off.
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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.
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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?
The bigger problem is trying to get the mainstream that would read an article like that to understand the technical difference between hacking and accessing unsecured data.
One of the definitions of hacking is illegally gaining access to a computer system. It doesn't need to involve any sort of exploit. Stealing from an unlocked home is still stealing. Gaining access to a system by phishing is still hacking. Leaking data that is technically publicly accessible that isn't meant to be publicly accessible is still hacking.
Not that I suspect anything good from 4chan but the proper thing to do would be to disclose to Tea that their data is public and allow them to fix the problem. The ethics of vulnerability disclosure still apply when the vulnerability is "hey you literally didn't secure this at all."
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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.
I'm all for groups of safe spaces for women. Especially when it's designed to keep them safe while dating. I have my doubts that Tea was that. Even if it was advertised as such, "tea" is slang for the word gossip. I've heard stories from several sources that it was used to dox people as well. Not saying what happened to the users is right. I think some users here are just feeling smug that this might cause the app to fail or shut down.
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It isn't the women who are wrong; it's the app developer and 4chan. But setting aside the data breach, creating a Yelp for dating is a ticking time bomb. They were going to get sued out the ass, data breach or no data breach. I don't know how many times this needs to happen, but I guess web developers have the memory of goldfish. There have been several attempts at something similar that got shut down for the obvious reasons. Making a website that rates human beings is always going to be a legal minefield.
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The Tea app is agnostic. While its purpose and main use case was made for the safety of women in the dating scene, it was inevitably used to spread exaggerated or misleading information about otherwise innocent men. Imagine being a privacy-conscious individual, and breaking up with a toxic woman. She could go on to spread lies about you and even upload pictures of you to the reverse image search/ai. So even if you were doing everything right from a privacy standpoint, you’d still end up in someone’s private database, subjected to ai training, shared with the government, or who knows what. While I do see the purpose of apps like these, they can effectively take away someone’s privacy/dignity without them even knowing about it. Now imagine being a 4channer, someone probably even more privacy-conscious than lemmings, and possibly experiencing mental disorders like paranoid schizophrenia or autism; of course they’re drawn to hacking an app that would destroy their privacy. They are not sane individuals, so this event really was inevitable.
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Your comment was on top for me in my app, so I was like "oh how bad could it be.". Holy shit you're not wrong, there's some disgusting comments that are getting voted up.
I'm low-key disappointed and appalled by these community members who believe these women "deserve" it for ... Trying to help each other be safer?
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Well lets be honest if someone made a gender inverse version ofctea many people would b concerned about what is being shared on the app. Honestly i find tesla disturbing and the 4 chan doxing dangerous. Both sides can be bad.
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Lemmy is full of people with a lot of technical knowledge, who look down on anyone without it. Just look at their responses to someone complaining and an issue on Windows, it's just a hundred people telling you what Linux distro they use.
It's not so much mysogyny, they just can't pass up the opportunity to be smug about something.
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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.
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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.
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?
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".
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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.
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This is why there should be a nationwide rule that PII data should be deleted after the users identity has been verified
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Reading these incredible comments has revealed a large piece of what was named as the reason for lemm.ee shutting down.
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I thought 4chan shut down permanently like 2 months ago?
Cancer can return after going into remission for a while.
Nah they came back online after like 2 weeks I think?
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What are the chances of this being the main reason for the app's existence?
Seeing as the word hack is doing a lot of heavy lifting. They didn't bother to actually secure the data and then put it on the internet for anyone to access.
I had been under the impression that 4chan had also basically died due to their own site getting hacked
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