Tea, the woman-only dating advice app where users can anonymously rate and review men, has made quite a name for itself in recent weeks.
Firstly it stirred controversy with its unpleasant take on digital vigilantism, providing a platform through which anyone could damage the reputation of a man with unverified claims, and no apparent method for them to have any comeback.
And then, as we recently reported, Tea proved itself to be riddled with security problems that exposed sensitive user information, including images and private messages.
Nonetheless, Tea managed to achieve a prime position towards the top of the app store charts.
And so its perhaps no surprise to see that knock-off apps like TeaOnHer have suddenly popped up on smartphones, offering to give men the chance to share photos and details of women they have supposedly dated.
Unfortunately, TeaOnHer hasn’t stopped at copying the functionality of the original Tea app (albeit skewed towards men rating women). It also appears to have carelessly mimicked the Tea app’s recklessness when it comes to data security.
As TechCrunch reports, TeaOnHer has – like the app that inspired it – been found to expose sensitive personal information, including governments IDs, driving licences, and selfies.
TeaOnHer appears to have been written rapidly, clearly inspired by the controversial women-only Tea app, and even copies wording from the original app’s store description in its own listing.
The app, published on the iOS app store earlier this week, is currently ranked the second-most-downloaded Lifestyle app on the platform.
Which makes it all the more worrying that Techcrunch discovered a security flaw that granted access to TeaOnHer app users, including their email addresses, driver’s licenses, and uploaded selfies.
According to TechCrunch‘s report, the images of driving licenses are accessible to anybody with a browser – no password required.
The report has deliberately avoided sharing too much detail about the nature of the vulnerability, in fear that it could be replicated by others as the problem has not yet been fixed.
In fact, according to TechCrunch reporters Amanda Silberling and
Zack Whittaker, the app’s developer Newville Media Corporation has not responded to emails asking how to report details of the security problem.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, it appears that the app’s creator, Newville Media’s CEO and founder Xavier Lampkin, has left his own email address and password exposed on the company’s server.
As the password appears to grant access to the app’s “admin” panel the opportunities for a malicious actor to use the exposed credentials and cause even more mayhem is considerable.
Dating online can be terrifying enough as it is. Dating “advice” apps that allow individuals to anonymously research and review potential partners are clearly fraught with problems that can turn it into a nightmare.
Maybe you would be wiser to avoid these Tea-related apps altogether, as they have proven themselves to be more proficient at spilling data than sharing helpful advice to daters.
