this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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Users from 4chan claim to have discovered an exposed database hosted on Google’s mobile app development platform, Firebase, belonging to the newly popular women’s dating safety app Tea. Users say they are rifling through peoples’ personal data and selfies uploaded to the app, and then posting that data online, according to screenshots, 4chan posts, and code reviewed by 404 Media.

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[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 43 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (5 children)

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.

[–] LePoisson@lemmy.world 13 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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?

[–] jwmgregory@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 41 minutes ago* (last edited 32 minutes ago)

saw this happening here, saw it happening in reddit threads on the topic, saw it all over the media cycle in the comments.

i agree, people’s visceral backlash against this app is steeped in a deep misogyny. most of these comments have a vapid absence of any sort of even basic recognition towards these women as people. talking about them like they’re abstract figures or test subjects up in here.

watching people take somewhat valid privacy concerns as an excuse to let loose their most toxic feelings towards women used to be the sort of thing only losers or emboldened megalomaniacs did in public, even just a decade ago.

in the past years i’ve just seen all my peers, regardless of political affiliation, manipulated into a cult of outrage that serves as another hamster wheel upon which capital may spin.

imtiredboss.png

[–] DrSteveBrule@mander.xyz 4 points 55 minutes ago

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.

And even if it was purely a gossip app, an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

[–] wizbiz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 28 minutes ago

"gossip" is for safety. It's often information that men don't shared so it's painted like it's bad. Claiming women shouldn't gossip is just more misogyny.

[–] bathing_in_bismuth@sh.itjust.works -3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

This comment is one hour old, let's give you my SS and CC info

[–] UncleGrandPa@lemmy.world 2 points 36 minutes ago

What are the chances of this being the main reason for the app's existence?

[–] VinnyDaCat@lemmy.world 1 points 36 minutes ago (1 children)

I don't quite understand the outrage in the thread. I've been looking through the comments, trying to see if this ever went beyond gossip and I can't find anything.

From my understanding the app was intended to be a safe space for women to discuss dating. Relaying information about dangerous individuals, or people who cheat. I can imagine that things might have gotten slightly out of hand in regards to anonymous gossip, but is that anything compared to being doxxed? Besides, women, and men have been gossiping behind each others backs for as long as humans have existed. An anonymous app makes it significantly worse certainly, but it is what it is. This behavior is always going to exist for better or for worse. For example, people already discuss this on sites like fetlife since the risk of ending up with someone who wants to batter you for the sake of battering you is somewhat high there.

Surely we can have some sympathy for people who have had their identifications doxxed by 4chan who haven't done anything worse than a bit of toxic gossip at most?

[–] rozodru@lemmy.world 1 points 13 minutes ago (1 children)

you're right as far it's intentions go. I honestly couldn't give a rats ass about what it intended to do what I have a MASSIVE issue with is that it did the EXACT opposite of what it "intended to do."

It didn't provide Women with a "safe space" because women's government issued IDs and their personal selfies were, quite literally, OUT IN THE OPEN. It opened Women who used the app to way more harm.

Their database, and i'm being extremely generous when I call it that, wasn't even password protected. not even a simple plain text password like "password123" there was NO password. at all. period. All I would have had to do was simply see where the app sent the scanned ID's, open a terminal, SSH into it WITHOUT A PASSWORD OR KEY, and then I now have access to the IDs of over 13,000 Women. Hell I probably wouldn't have even had to SSH into it, probably could have opened the damn thing from a web browser.

So when the media is saying 4chan "leaked" this stuff again they're being generous. It's like if you were walking down the street that Tea lived on and you noticed they left their door wide open so you decided to peak your head inside and while peaking your head in you noticed a box right by the door that had thousands of IDs in it so you picked up the box and walked out. Chances are other people got to this box before 4chan did, many people probably did, it's just that 4chan were the only ones to say "Hey I found this house with a wide open door and decided to pick up this box with all these IDs in it, neat huh?"

[–] VinnyDaCat@lemmy.world 1 points 6 minutes ago

None of this is what I am discussing. I'm talking about the people in the thread who are saying that these people deserved this.

[–] Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 8 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

I had been under the impression that 4chan had also basically died due to their own site getting hacked

[–] Noturbuddy@lemmy.zip 10 points 3 hours ago

That which has no life can never truly die (or something)

[–] RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com 6 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

the site got hacked and most of the admins were revealed to have .gov emails but everyone pretty much already expected that so nobody actually cared and it's back to business as usual

Oh my god that's... So stupid, i hate this time line.

Dirty water that would behave no different if you sifted out the proteins.

[–] Longmactoppedup@aussie.zone 52 points 14 hours ago (5 children)

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.

[–] kalpol@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

California, Utah, Texas all have laws now requiring age verification to use an app store

[–] ftbd@feddit.org 1 points 2 hours ago

I'd be interested to know how that works with F-Droid or Aurora.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

If you think that's the same thing, you don't understand at least on of those things, but safe money is both...

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