Two data breaches, a number of class action lawsuits, and a removal from the Apple App Store later, the favored and controversial relationship security app Tea for Women is again and launching a brand new website version of its companies at the moment.
Billed as a “Yelp for males,” Tea was created in 2023 however was comparatively unknown till July 2025, when it shortly turned a viral sensation and shot to the highest of App Retailer downloads—at one level outranking ChatGPT on the Apple App Retailer.
Just like “Are We Relationship the Identical Man?” Fb teams, Tea provided girls what they thought was a safe discussion board to acquire info and recommendation on males they’d matched with on relationship apps.
Ladies utilizing the platform wished to make sure that romantic prospects have been secure to fulfill in particular person and to root out abusers, predators, and cheaters, which Tea allowed them to do by way of built-in background checks, a intercourse offender map, and reverse picture searches.
Customers may additionally vote on whether or not a person’s habits was fascinating or shady by deciding on crimson or inexperienced flag icons beneath somebody’s put up, providing the creator a kind of pulse examine that they could in any other case have needed to look forward to till their subsequent women’ night time out.
However after touchdown on the general public’s radar, the app shortly confronted backlash and sparked debates about gender divides in relationship and males’s proper to privateness in a digital-first period.
Again-to-back data breaches ensued: Hackers gained entry to 72,000 pictures, together with customers’ authorities IDs and selfies, and over 1 million messages, then posted them to 4chan, an nameless discussion board primarily utilized by males and traditionally a house to incel culture and hate speech.
Authorized fallout and App Retailer ban
At the very least 10 potential class action lawsuits adopted, alleging that Tea had been negligent in its information practices.
On the time of the hack, Tea’s privateness coverage asserted that customers’ selfies have been deleted as soon as their profiles had been verified. Photos leaked within the breach, nonetheless, dated back to 2023, contradicting the app’s personal privateness coverage. (As of August 11, 2025, Tea’s privacy policy has been up to date to state that it retains person information for “so long as [a user’s] account is energetic as wanted to offer [a user] the Companies, or the place we now have an ongoing official enterprise want.”)
In October, the app was faraway from Apple’s App Retailer for failing to fulfill requirements round privateness, content material moderation, and person expertise.
On the Google Play Retailer, the place Tea remains to be out there for obtain, a notable number of negative reviews complain of glitchiness, hassle staying logged in, and an absence of free options.
Some reviewers additionally reported that they have been denied the flexibility to make use of the app after submitting a selfie to show their gender id—Tea is a women-only platform—alleging that they have been rejected for not showing female sufficient.
New Tea goals to proper previous wrongs
The launch of Tea 2.0, the brand new web site model of the app, goals to treatment these issues of safety and develop entry to the platform, in keeping with Jessica Dees, the platform’s head of belief and security.
“Launching our internet expertise is a strategic transfer towards platform resilience, permitting us to ascertain a scalable hub that isn’t depending on a single distribution channel,” Dees wrote in an e mail to Quick Firm.
She added that Tea has introduced on consultants within the belief and security discipline to handle group security particularly.
“This transition gives us with technical flexibility as we implement extra strong moderation workflows,” Dees wrote. “This isn’t a selection between a brand new website and higher moderation. It’s about constructing a long-lasting expertise that provides girls entry to security, wherever they’re.”
How will the brand new Tea be completely different?
The web site will supply customers the flexibility to crowdsource info on a possible date prefer it did earlier than.
The additional security options, which value $14.99 a month, will proceed to be out there on the cell model of Tea (nonetheless solely out there to Android customers) and will likely be integrated into the web site sooner or later, Dees says.
Moreover, Android customers can entry new options together with a digital “speakeasy” the place customers can vote on polls, interact with topic-specific boards, and put up nameless audio messages, in addition to an AI-powered relationship coach that may analyze and counsel responses to messages with relationship app matches.
Dees wrote that Tea is taking considerations about privateness severely, each from girls who might have been impacted by the previous information breaches or worry being a part of one sooner or later, in addition to males who’ve voiced anger and concern over posts about them that weren’t independently verified and will have included false and even defamatory assertions.
“Tea helps girls evaluate patterns and potential crimson flags moderately than counting on remoted claims,” Dees wrote. “By enabling girls to change real-world perception in a moderated setting, [Tea] helps create earlier consciousness, cut back threat, and assist safer decision-making, which may be life-saving in a relationship panorama the place many types of hurt escalate exactly as a result of warning indicators are missed or shared too late.”
Tea now gives non-users a technique to request content removal by way of its web site.
The platform can be partnering with a third-party id verification service to get rid of any friction for ladies who had points getting access to Tea by submitting a selfie, which was beforehand required throughout the account creation course of.
Dees didn’t present particular examples of what info customers will likely be required to submit.
“Customers are given a spread of choices relating to the data they supply when creating an account, and the data they select to offer is evaluated utilizing quite a lot of methods earlier than they’re granted entry to the platform,” Dees wrote.
Followers need extra Tea
The announcement of Tea’s return has been met with pleasure. Though Dees declined to share the scale of the web site’s “VIP waitlist,” it has an enormous current fanbase to depend on—even after the breaches.
The app surpassed six million downloads earlier than it was faraway from the App Retailer, and in keeping with Dees, an in-app ballot that garnered 34,000 responses discovered that 73% of customers felt Tea had made relationship a safer expertise for them.
“Thank God,” one commenter wrote of the platform’s return. “[T]his app saves lives when the authorized system fails to guard us!!”
