By Angela Palumbo

Tea -- a viral new app that's meant to make women feel safe while using online dating services -- has been subject to a security breach that exposed users' IDs.

Tea confirmed the breach to Barron's. In a statement, the company said that it identified unauthorized access to one of its systems and immediately launched an investigation to assess the impact. Preliminary findings indicate that the incident involved a legacy data storage system containing information from over two years ago, Tea said.

Tea added that approximately 72,000 images -- including about 13,000 images of selfies and photo identification submitted during account verification and 59,000 images publicly viewable in the app from posts, comments and direct messages -- were accessed without authorization.

"Tea has engaged third-party cybersecurity experts and are working around the clock to secure our systems," the company said. "At this time, there is no evidence to suggest that current or additional user data was affected."

According to a 2023 study by Pew Research, 56% of women under 50 who have used dating sites or apps say they've been sent a sexually explicit message or image they didn't ask for, and about four-in-ten have had someone continue to contact them after they said they weren't interested.

Tea was launched in 2023, and has recently become the most downloaded free app in Apple's U.S. App Store, after gaining recent popularity on social media. According to researcher Sensor Tower, downloads of the Tea app through the first 23 days of July were up 320% compared to the same period in June.

The app is meant to provide women an anonymous space to find information about the men they are interested in speaking with through dating apps. The app uses reverse image searches to catch fake profiles, phone number lookups to check for secret relationships, and background checks to look for possible criminal records.

The Tea app uses a strict onboarding procedure that asks women to register by creating a username, while providing location, birth date, a selfie, and ID photo to verify the user is a woman. After uploading that information, users have to wait for access to get into the app. Tea had received over two million requests to join the service over the past week, the app maker said on its Instagram account on Thursday.

While the promise of anonymity may have enticed users, Tea says on its Privacy Policy page that "despite our efforts, no security measures are impenetrable."

The data breach comes during a difficult time for the online dating industry. Bumble announced in June that it was laying off about 30% of its workforce after total paying users declined. Match Group -- the owner of Tinder and Hinge -- also announced a 13% workforce reduction in May.

Raymond James analyst Andrew Marok recently wrote that "burnout from dating apps is real."

"Whether the fatigue has been caused by the nature of dating apps themselves or external factors, it is clear that churn/retention are under threat for online dating apps as taking a break from dating serves as an emotional upside for users," Marok wrote.

Bumble and Match Group didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Write to Angela Palumbo at angela.palumbo@dowjones.com

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 25, 2025 15:07 ET (19:07 GMT)

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