The TeaOnHer data breach saga feels like déjà vu in the worst way possible. If the name sounds familiar, that’s because it is.
A copycat app with a familiar scandal
Developed by Newville Media Corporation, TeaOnHer was created as the male equivalent of Tea, the viral women’s dating app. Yes, the same app that recently made headlines for a massive data leak. Not only did TeaOnHer launch with the same concept, it apparently inherited the same glaring security flaws too.
The result? A full-blown data breach exposing sensitive personal information from more than 53,000 users, including uploaded government IDs, driver’s licenses, and selfies. TechCrunch’s investigation found that these documents were accessible through public links, making it trivial for anyone to access them. Even the app’s CEO, Xavier Lampkin, wasn’t spared: his own profile and possibly his plaintext admin credentials were caught in the leak.
It’s hard to understand how a product that watched its inspiration implode on the world stage could still walk directly into the same wall.
If Tea was a cautionary tale, TeaOnHer is a sequel that ignores the first film
Even if someone believed there needed to be a “male version” of Tea, this wasn’t it. There’s no way to determine if the information shared by men on TeaOnHer is accurate.
Let’s not pretend the women featured on the app gave explicit consent to be discussed, rated, or have their pictures uploaded. In fact, TechCrunch reported seeing what may be explicit images and offensive comments about women on several profiles. Now, instead of being a counterpoint to Tea, TeaOnHer is mirroring all of its ethical issues, possibly with even less self-awareness.
TeaOnHer and its users have become exactly what they initially mocked.
Copy-paste, but make it insecure
The root of the breach lies in how closely TeaOnHer copied Tea, not just its concept, but also its backend infrastructure. The app seems to have duplicated Tea’s platform design, layout, and user flow, right down to the broken parts. The same insecure verification features and public document storage were carried over, almost like the developers missed every single headline about Tea’s failure just weeks earlier.
Even worse, the developers didn’t seem to do any proactive security audits. With no response to TechCrunch’s attempt to report the vulnerability, the publication had to go public with the details, citing the app’s popularity and ongoing risk.
Let that sink in. An app that was already under scrutiny for being ethically messy also failed to ensure users’ government IDs weren’t floating around online.
Why do people keep greenlighting these terrible ideas?
You might be wondering who would agree to launch an app like TeaOnHer, especially now? The short answer? Hype, fame, money and a deep belief that if something went viral once, it can go viral again with a slight twist.
There’s an ugly pattern in tech where the second something controversial becomes popular, there’s a mad dash to replicate it, flaws and all. Startups chase these moments, thinking speed matters more than substance. If it’s “just a minimum viable product,” they think, maybe no one will notice the problems until after they’ve cashed in on the virality.
Some of the motivations likely at play:
- FOMO-fueled development: Tea went viral, so of course someone thought, “Let’s do it for men!”
- Shortcut to fame: With TeaOnHer hitting No. 2 in the iOS Lifestyle app rankings (and No. 17 overall), it’s clear there’s money and visibility in mimicking controversy.
- Cultural normalization in tech: Among some developers, building off a broken trend feels more like a business opportunity than a red flag.
- Lack of experience: Often, these viral apps are made quickly by small teams who underestimate the technical and ethical weight of what they’re building.
When ethics are an afterthought
At the center of this is a mindset that treats real people like data points. The developers of TeaOnHer didn’t just recreate a bad idea. They actively made it worse by ignoring clear warning signs.
The men who signed up for the app? They helped reinforce a system where unverified, potentially harmful information about women gets shared publicly, all under the guise of “fairness” or “equality.”
The truth is that there’s no equity in repeating harm. It’s not empowerment, it’s imitation without reflection.
TeaOnHer is more than just a bad app with bad security. It’s an example of what happens when people confuse trend-chasing with innovation, and when no one stops to ask, “Should we build this?” instead of “Can we?”
By copying Tea without learning from its mistakes, TeaOnHer turned itself into a cautionary tale: a reminder that just because something goes viral doesn’t mean it should be repeated. Especially not without serious thought to ethics, consent, and the real people caught in the middle.
At the end of the day, TeaOnHer didn’t just replicate an app. It replicated a failure.
