Name: HACKED: The women’s dating safety app gone wrong - What in the World podcast, BBC World Service
Uploaded: 2026-02-04T08:10:56.000Z
Duration: 14 min 6 s
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Within that leak, there were 70,000 pictures of women, IDs, addresses.

So the woman that I spoke to, she saw the map, clicked on it, zoomed in, and

If you've ever used a dating app, you've probably asked yourself, is the person really who they say they are?

And that's why the T dating advice app really blew up in the us.

It offered women a chance to do background checks on men so they could find out if they were actually married, if they were using a fake identity or even a registered sex offender.

Hackers broke into the app and they leaked women's data and photos online.

So today you're going to hear how that breach has affected women and whether apps like this actually make dating safer or do they create new risks for men and women.

I'm Hannah, this is what in the World from the BBC World Service.

And here in the studio with me is Jackie Wakefield, the BBC's global disinformation reporter, to spill the tea.

What has your experience of online dating been like?

Because on paper, the tea app sounds like a good idea.

I've not had a lot of experience online dating, but

I think as women in particular, we've heard our fair share of horror stories from friends of dates gone wrong, of a guy that they cheating on someone with them, of not being who they say they are.

And I think that's where things like the T up come into it.

So the T up, the purpose was to keep women safe from dating so that they could share their experiences and almost review men that they had dated or men that they could potentially go on dates with to check.

So there were many things that you could check.

You could check red flags, green flags, you could check if he was a registered sex of offender, if he was married, if it was a catfish.

But there was also a lot of tea or gossip on the site as well.

And by catfish, of course, we mean someone stealing or using someone else's identity, just someone not saying who they are.

And we've all heard these kinds of stories, they're so, so common.

And this app, it was only open for women, right?

And they had to upload a photo or an ID of themselves to make sure that they were women to be able to get in.

And the whole point of it only being available for women was controversial.

So it's been number one, number two, number three in the US App Store for months now.

It's hard to get an idea of the exact number of users, but

reportedly it's around the 1 to 2 million mark.

But of course, with that virality came a lot of backlash.

So obviously, in a space where there are only women speaking about men and men can't access it, men weren't too happy about that, which is kind of fair enough.

There was a lot of unproven gossip on the site.

A lot of things that really aren't required for women's safety, that if, like, how are his abs?

And like, I mean, I saw one post where a woman had posted a guy, and

some of the comments were like, this guy's definitely gay.

And what I saw online, the male reaction is that they were saying, like, I want to get my photo taken off this app.

And there was a lot of frustration on that side as well.

Is could be what it comes down to if people are saying things about someone that could damage their reputation.

And actually, this wasn't the first app of its kind.

There was this Facebook group or a series of Facebook groups.

It was, are we dating the same guy groups?

I mean, that's sounds like it could be a really useful tool because with online dating, it'd be so easy for a guy to just double life and have multiple women on the go at the same time.

But you've talked a little bit about some of the things that women were posting.

Where was the line here between, you know, protecting women and potentially shaming men?

It's such a gray area because on the one part, like, if it was you and me, if we'd been on a date with the same guy and you'd had a really negative experience, you could just share that with me in private over a coffee and no questions asked, really.

But the fact of the matter is, is this is posted on online for anyone to see whether that's.

Facebook pages or the T app, where millions of people could potentially see it.

And that's where you kind of get into trouble.

I mean, whisper networks between women about negative experiences with men, they've existed forever.

But when it does go online and it is for everyone to see, that's when you know there needs to be some way of verifying the information.

Because otherwise the tapp in particular, where men couldn't log on to see what was being posted about them, there's just no way for them to defend themselves in this particular situation.

So lots of men were unhappy about the potential information circulating about them online, whether it was true or not.

But even the fact that it was up there, because this is potentially really personal stuff, it's dating experiences and maybe like one person sexual experiences.

What kind of information did they take and what was leaked?

So the information was posted by an Anonymous user on 4chan.So 4chan is a forum site.

It's very famous for having a lot of incels misogynist groups, you know, people that often want to do women a lot of harm go to this site.

So it's really worrying that the data was shared there.

From what we know, the anonymous user was the one that actually hacked the data.

So essentially this 4chan user posted it on one of the forums.

And within that leak there were 70,000 pictures of women, IDs, addresses, other information.

And what this information was was verification, selfies.

So in order to access the app, which is completely anonymous, a woman had to take a photo of herself and send it through to be verified as a woman.

So in essence, what happened was when this was posted to 4chan, there was a cel.

Misogynist groups online had been hating the tea app for a really long time.

And as we stated earlier, there's lots of really, you know, fair critique of the app, but

a lot of that became quite misogynistic on these sort of online forums.

And they've been talking for quite a long time about wanting to bring it down.

And you spoke to some of the women whose data was leaked.

So both the women actually came across their information that was leaked on social media.

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HACKED: The women’s dating safety app gone wrong - What in the World podcast, BBC World Service

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