Butthurt 4Chan Trolls Hacked the Tea App, Proving Women Right Yet Again

By Tuesday, spokespeople for the women’s dating safety app confirmed multiple data breaches, exposing 72,000 images and 1.1 million direct messages—including conversations about rape and abortion.

By Ria Gupta | July 30, 2025 | 12:20pm

Screenshot: Teaforwomen.com In Depth

Butthurt 4Chan Trolls Hacked the Tea App, Proving Women Right Yet Again

The Tea Dating Advice app almost sounded too good to be true. Upload an image of the man you were talking to and find out if he was cheating and/or had committed a crime, thanks to the thousands of other users willing to literally spill the tea. It was like a girls’ group chat, just infinitely bigger, and one that had recently become the most-downloaded app on the App Store. My friends used it to keep up on hometown gossip and steer women away from the prolific cheaters and no-good men that terrorized our high school. We were performing a public service, doing right by girl code.

And when was the last time men respected that?

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On Monday, spokespeople from the Tea app confirmed multiple data breaches, leaking 1.1 million direct messages and 72,000 images, including government IDs. The first breach was reported on Friday and was limited to the release of private images, including photo identification of the app’s users. (When signing up, the app requires users to take a live photo to verify they’re a woman.) 404 Media then confirmed a second data breach on Monday, this time targeting direct messages and exposing personal details online. The affected system has since been taken offline.

The outlet obtained some of the leaked messages from the second breach and said they included conversations about abortions, writing that “it was possible to very easily determine the real identities of many of the people sending the messages or being discussed.” Great! There will definitely be no consequences of this whatsoever.

The Tea app, which has over 4 million users, was launched in 2023 as a women’s dating safety app. Founder Sean Cook created it as a response to witnessing his mom’s trials in the dating world, including being catfished. The app also donates 10% of its profits to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. It recently skyrocketed into fame after going viral on TikTok. During the week of July 17, downloads went up 525% with users sharing how the app had saved them from a terrible dating experience.

As the app’s popularity seemingly grew overnight, there were concentrated efforts from trolls to try and bring it down. On Thursday, one day before the first hack, a thread on 4chan called for a “hack and leak” campaign. Meanwhile, a few far-right message forums suggested men make their own app to shitpost women—as if they needed a safe space for that and don’t already have burner accounts on Twitter and 7,000 Reddit threads. But Teaborn (how original) recently went live, though the App Store removed it within 24 hours after its users began posting revenge porn. The trolls in the men’s rights threads on Reddit are very upset about it.

“Apple just removed us yesterday because Tea app doesn’t like competition, but we are working to go back with a new brand!” one of the app’s creators told NBC News. Currently waiting for Elon Musk to launch his “own” AI-powered mobile operating system.

Eventually, 4chan users answered the “hack and leak” call and found an exposed database for the Tea app on Google’s Firebase. They posted the thousands of images of women and created rankings of each woman’s perceived attractiveness—so incredibly Zuckerberg of them.

The leaked images are from a two-year-old database, but the leaked messages are as recent as July 2025. Among those messages were details like personal addresses, as well as conversations between users discussing topics like rape and divorce. The Tea app is currently offering resources to affected users.

“We are working to identify any users whose personal information was involved and will be offering free identity protection services to those individuals,” a spokesperson told Business Insider.

To any woman targeted: we see you, we grieve with you, and we’re ready to throw hands.

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