Help me out with a question I’ve been pondering, will you? I’m trying to figure out if there is a single adult on Earth whose personal information isn’t for sale somewhere on the darker corners of the internet. Data breaches are a regular occurrence now. We give companies our information; they promise to keep it safe and then they sell it to dodgy third parties or lose it in hacking attacks. There is a website called haveibeenpwned.com where you can check if your email addresses have been part of a data breach. My personal email is in 15 of them.
The latest data breach to hit the headlines is particularly nasty. A popular women-only dating-safety app called Tea lets users compare notes about men to see if they are dating the same person or if anyone has red flags to share. It’s a bit like an app version of the popular “Are we dating the same guy?” Facebook groups. Last Friday, the company behind Tea confirmed it had been breached. Women have to submit a selfie (to “prove” their gender) in order to use the app; an estimated 72,000 images, including 13,000 verification photos and photos of government IDs, have been leaked online. More than 1m private messages have also been leaked.
This isn’t just a run-of-the-mill data breach – it’s revenge. It seems users of 4chan, a message board popular with rightwing and misogynistic trolls, were upset by the app and called for a “hack and leak” campaign. 404 Media reported that the database of stolen images has now been posted on 4chan and X. Someone has reportedly even created a site where men can rate women’s selfies exposed in the leaked data.
There are obviously numerous ethical issues with apps such as Tea, or the Facebook groups that allow people to share unverified and potentially defamatory information about men. But there is a reason these digital whisper networks exist: social media companies and dating sites do very little to protect women. According to one survey, 31% of women reported being sexually assaulted or raped by someone they had met through an online dating site. Tea was supposed to be a rare safe space – but now I suspect a lawsuit is brewing.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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