Key Takeaways
- Tea gained millions of user requests the same week the app reported a security breach, highlighting how women who use dating apps value strong online protections.
- Despite the challenges, users are enthusiastic about integrating background checks into dating apps and would respond positively to such innovations.
- Although Tea claimed to immediately delete selfies used for ID verification purposes, 13,000 of the leaked photos were selfies, prompting user distrust.
The dating safety app Tea gained more than 2 million registration requests the week of July 21, but it ended the week with a massive security breach that left 72,000 user images compromised. The breach only underscores how some women who use online dating apps yearn for stronger safety tech just as much as romance itself.
Of the vulnerable photos, 13,000 were originally used for photo identification purposes when the users first signed up for the app, and 59,000 were seemingly from posts, comments, and DMs. Nearly one week later, Tea suspended its messaging system after learning that sensitive content from private DMs were also accessed in the breach.
The company has launched an extensive investigation into the breach and has involved the FBI. “While we acknowledge this serious cyber incident, we also acknowledge that Tea is needed now more than ever,” Tea wrote in a statement posted to Instagram.
Tea originally aimed to give women extensive safety features that dating apps can’t provide, including reverse image searches to spot catfish, phone number lookups, and criminal background checks.
But Tea’s recent security lapse has left women feeling more distrustful of “safety tools” like those offered by Tea and other background checking apps, like Garbo.
A Distrustful World Calls For Strong Safety Measures
Security breach aside, Tea’s rapidly growing community suggests that women who use online dating apps generally distrust dating app security measures.
In fact, we know this for sure: A 2023 Pew Research study found that more than half of surveyed women (57%) said online dating sites and apps are not a safe way to meet new people. That’s compared with 41% of men in the survey who said the same.
Some 2.5 million women wouldn’t have attempted to sign up for Tea if they didn’t think it had more to offer them than the traditional safety measures taken by dating apps.
Negative online dating experiences are on the rise, according to Pew, and background checking apps like Tea landed on a potential solution: More than half of both Pew-surveyed genders (54% of men and 64% of women) agreed that online dating platforms should implement background checks.
In 2021, Match Group partnered with Garbo, a nonprofit promoting online safety, to provide background checks for a user’s potential dates. But in 2023, Garbo pulled out of the partnership.
“Over the last few years, we have faced a lack of support and real initiative from online platforms, continuous harassment and threats by bad actors on these platforms,” Garbo’s founder, Kathryn Kosmides, said in a statement. In effect, Garbo decided to shut down its background checking app for good.
Garbo’s press release included a particularly damning statement: “It’s become clear that most online platforms aren’t legitimately committed to trust and safety for their users.”
According to Garbo, background checks are also too expensive and too unreliable for one nonprofit to handle, especially if it doesn’t have industry support.
But this doesn’t mean dating apps should give up trying to integrate with background checkers. After all, it’s something daters are consistently open about wanting from their dating apps.
A 2025 TransUnion survey confirmed as much, with a quarter of respondents saying they would be willing to pay for their own background check, and 40% willing to pay for their own and a potential date’s.
It’s clear women are willing to invest in their own online safety, even amid Tea’s massive security breach.
Tea Has A Selfie Problem, Users Say
Tea’s developers have fixed the security errors leading to the data breach, but the fallout is only just beginning. Eagle-eyed users noticed a potentially contradictory point in the company’s statement.
Tea’s privacy policy currently claims that all selfies used for ID verification purposes are promptly deleted within hours of being submitted. But in light of the security breach, some users don’t believe this is entirely true.
At least 13,000 of the selfies used for ID verification purposes were part of the leak, suggesting they weren’t, in fact, deleted at all.
Tea addressed the contradiction in a press release following the security breach: “This data was originally archived in compliance with law enforcement requirements related to cyber-bullying prevention.”
The statement continued, “At this time, we have no evidence to suggest that photos can be linked to specific users within the app.”
This explanation has not satisfied some users, who question whether Tea’s insistence that selfies are always deleted was simply a way to make potential users feel safer, enticing them to use the app. “Little late for the ‘trust’ thing,” one person wrote on Tea’s Instagram account.
The app announced on Instagram that it is dedicated to re-earning the trust of every affected user.
“We’ve notified law enforcement to support the investigation,” according to the Instagram post. “Once we get towards the end of our investigation we’ll be reaching out to any affected users directly with free identity protection support.”
A security breach can be especially distressing on an app like Tea, where users rely on its tools and community for trustworthy safety information — and expect it to be a safe space.
And yet, some people are still flooding Tea’s Instagram post with excitement. “Protecting women and creating safe spaces? This is the future of dating,” one user wrote.
Millions of people don’t sign up for an app without a good reason. It’s clear that even in the wake of shattered user trust, some dating app users still crave safety just as much as they crave romance.
