# After Tea Leak, 33,000 Women's Addresses Were Purportedly Mapped on Google Maps
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 23:22:01 2025-08-24
After the Tea dating-advice app leaked information on its users, the BBC found two online maps "purporting to represent the locations of women who had signed up for Tea... showing 33,000 pins spread across the United States." The maps were hosted on Google Maps. (Notified by the BBC, Google deleted the maps, saying they violated their harassment policies.)
"Since the breach, more than 10 women have filed class actions against the company which owns Tea," the article points out, noting that leaked content is also spreading around social media:
Since the breach, the BBC has found websites, apps and even a "game" featuring the leaked data... The "game" puts the selfies submitted by women head-to-head, instructing users to click on the one they prefer, with leaderboards of the "top 50" and "bottom 50"... [And one researcher calculates more than 12,000 posts on 4Chan referenced the Tea app over the three weeks after the leak.]
It is unsurprising that the leak was exploited. The app had drawn criticism ever since it had grown in popularity. Defamation, with the spread of unproven allegations, and doxxing, when someone's identifying information is published without their consent, were real possibilities. Men's groups had wanted to take the app down — and when they found the data breach, they saw it as a chance for retribution.
They weren't the only ones with a gripe against Tea. Back in 2023 the fiance of Tea's CEO founder approached the administrator of a collection of Facebook groups called "Are We Dating the Same Guy?" to see if she'd be the "face" of the Tea app, reports 404 Media. But they add that after Tea failed to recruit her, Tea "shifted tactics" to raid her Facebook groups instead:
Tea paid influencers to undermine Are We Dating the Same Guy and created competing Facebook groups with nearly identical names. 404 Media also identified a number of seemingly hijacked Facebook accounts that spammed the real Are We Dating The Same Guy groups with links to Tea app.
Reviews for the Tea app show several women later thought the app was affiliated with their trusted Facebook groups, the reporter said this week on a 404 Media podcast.
And they add that founder Sean Cook took over the "Tara" personna that his fiance has used for technical support. "So he's on the app pretend to be a woman, talking to other women who are on the app in order to weed out men who are being deceptive..."
Thanks to Slashdot reader samleecole for sharing the article.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/08/24/2227258/after-tea-leak-33000-womens-addresses-were-purportedly-mapped-on-google-maps?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.
robot (spnet, 1) → All – 23:22:01 2025-08-24
After the Tea dating-advice app leaked information on its users, the BBC found two online maps "purporting to represent the locations of women who had signed up for Tea... showing 33,000 pins spread across the United States." The maps were hosted on Google Maps. (Notified by the BBC, Google deleted the maps, saying they violated their harassment policies.)
"Since the breach, more than 10 women have filed class actions against the company which owns Tea," the article points out, noting that leaked content is also spreading around social media:
Since the breach, the BBC has found websites, apps and even a "game" featuring the leaked data... The "game" puts the selfies submitted by women head-to-head, instructing users to click on the one they prefer, with leaderboards of the "top 50" and "bottom 50"... [And one researcher calculates more than 12,000 posts on 4Chan referenced the Tea app over the three weeks after the leak.]
It is unsurprising that the leak was exploited. The app had drawn criticism ever since it had grown in popularity. Defamation, with the spread of unproven allegations, and doxxing, when someone's identifying information is published without their consent, were real possibilities. Men's groups had wanted to take the app down — and when they found the data breach, they saw it as a chance for retribution.
They weren't the only ones with a gripe against Tea. Back in 2023 the fiance of Tea's CEO founder approached the administrator of a collection of Facebook groups called "Are We Dating the Same Guy?" to see if she'd be the "face" of the Tea app, reports 404 Media. But they add that after Tea failed to recruit her, Tea "shifted tactics" to raid her Facebook groups instead:
Tea paid influencers to undermine Are We Dating the Same Guy and created competing Facebook groups with nearly identical names. 404 Media also identified a number of seemingly hijacked Facebook accounts that spammed the real Are We Dating The Same Guy groups with links to Tea app.
Reviews for the Tea app show several women later thought the app was affiliated with their trusted Facebook groups, the reporter said this week on a 404 Media podcast.
And they add that founder Sean Cook took over the "Tara" personna that his fiance has used for technical support. "So he's on the app pretend to be a woman, talking to other women who are on the app in order to weed out men who are being deceptive..."
Thanks to Slashdot reader samleecole for sharing the article.
[ Read more of this story ]( https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/08/24/2227258/after-tea-leak-33000-womens-addresses-were-purportedly-mapped-on-google-maps?utm_source=atom1.0moreanon&utm_medium=feed ) at Slashdot.