Tea app reportedly sued for multiple million in a class-action lawsuit
-
Tea App Logo (Image via Website/Tea - Dating Safety for Women)A viral dating-safety app called the Tea app, where women users anonymously share experiences about men they have encountered, is now under legal fire following a serious data breach.
According to a report by NBC News, the widely discussed leak publicly exposed sensitive user content such as pictures, government IDs, and texts. The shocking incident prompted multiple potential class-action lawsuits across state and federal courts in the United States.
Created in 2023, according to a report by Dexerto, the app faced lawsuits accusing its creator, Tea Dating Advice Inc., of negligence and breaching user agreements through poor data handling.
🚨As if dating wasn't bad enough already, and this app is #1 in the country for downloads
— Joker (@BachelorJoker) July 24, 2025
The "TEA" app allows anonymous, unverified doxing of personal info, risks defaming men with false accusations & it's certainly a privacy violation. pic.twitter.com/NbZsjHb8zAThough the dating app was launched as a safety program, helping women to know about men living in the specified areas, it faced a major challenge due to its frightening data breach. Reflecting on the potential consequences, an expert revealed to NMC News, the company could face damages amounting to tens of millions of dollars.
Everything we know about the Tea app being sued with several lawsuits
It all began in July 2025 after hackers exploited a major vulnerability in the Tea app's security system, leading to a leak of 13,000 verification selfies and government IDs, as per the Dexerto report.
Apart from anonymously breaching privacy and sharing 72,000 user images publicly, the cyberpunks also leaked around 1.1 million messages after two days. These texts, from early 2023 to July 2025, were sensitive and included many personal conversations and personal details such as contact numbers and names.
Lawyer Scott Cole began spearheading one of the lawsuits against the dating app for his client, Griselda Reyes. According to the NBC News report, she joined the Tea app a few days ahead of the major privacy breach. After getting notified about her information being leaked widely to the public, she decided to consider "credit monitoring and identity theft insurance options."
Discussing the unexpected leak and speaking for Griselda, the lawyer shared with the outlet,
"Her particular concerns have more to do with information that she has shared with others on the site and how that might come back to haunt her in the future, and I think that’s probably the No. 1 concern that I’ve heard directly or indirectly from users."
A suit, filed anonymously by Jane Doe, names Tea, 4Chan, X (formerly Twitter), and Teaspill as defendants. According to the information provided in the lawsuit, it mentioned,
"The app promised her that anonymity. It promised her safety. It promised to delete her verification data. Tea broke every one of those promises."
Last month, the Tea app released an official update on the "cyber incident" that occurred earlier in July. Reflecting on the statement, the team informed,
"We have recently learned that some direct messages (DMs) were accessed as part of the initial incident. Out of an abundance of caution, we have taken the affected system offline. At this time, we have no evidence of access to other parts of our environment."
According to the update, its direct message feature has been made "temporarily unavailable." Ensuring commitment towards the users and better security, the dating app also added,
"We're committed to keeping you informed as quickly as possible. That said, because this is an active investigation involving external cybersecurity experts and the FBI, there are limits to what we can share - and when. Please know that our team remains fully engaged in strengthening the Tea App's security."
When shared on July 29, 2025, the app further spoke about working on a process to find those users whose personal details were involved and would be "offering free identity protection services to those individuals." Releasing an official statement on its website, the Tea - Dating Safety for Women app detailed the incident. Based on the available information, the team
"identified unauthorized access to our systems and immediately launched a full investigation with assistance from external cybersecurity experts to understand the scope and impact of the incident."
POV: You’re a man in 2025.
— jvrXjvr (@thatsjvr) August 3, 2025
You’ve lived. Ghosted. Fumbled texts.
Some dates were great. Others… forgettable.
None of that matters now. (thread time 🧵⬇️)
There’s a profile about you —
name, number, socials, perhaps your address.
You never gave permission.
But Tea App did.… pic.twitter.com/1L4gteVolsThey came across the significant issue at 6:44 AM PST on July 25. Delving further into the revelations, the statement disclosed,
"A legacy data storage system was compromised, resulting in unauthorized access to a dataset from prior to February 2024. This dataset includes approximately 72,000 images, including approximately 13,000 selfies and photo identification submitted by users during account verification and approximately 59,000 images publicly viewable in the app from posts, comments and direct messages. No email addresses or phone numbers were accessed. Only users who signed up before February 2024 were affected."
Follow Primetimer for more such updates.