Technologies

Tea Is in Apple’s Top Free Apps, but What Is It and Why Is Everyone Talking About It?

Women’s dating safety app Tea is still sitting near the top of the free Apple App Store rankings, and experienced a data breach last week. Here’s everything you need to know.

Ask any single woman, and they’ll probably tell you how rough the dating world is. From ghosting to misleading bios, it can be challenging to know who you’re really chatting to on dating apps, and whether they’re telling the truth about themselves.

Tea is an app that allows women to anonymously review men and spill «the tea» on men they’ve dated. About 1 million women have started using the app in the past week. It’s reminiscent of those Facebook «Are We Dating the Same Guy?» groups that many cities have, except this app uses AI to verify that the people making profiles are women.

Tea has become a viral sensation in the last few weeks — for good and bad reasons.

The app experienced a security breach — revealed last Friday — in which data, including women’s driver’s licenses and selfies, was posted to 4chan. The breach is reportedly the result of Tea’s unsecured database. The company confirmed to CNET that unauthorized access to its systems had occurred.

What is the Tea app?

Tea is a free, women-only app exclusive to the US. It’s not a dating app; it’s a tool that women use in addition to their dating apps. It’s a space where you can share negative interactions while dating and solicit feedback on specific men you date to expose potential risks and protect other women.

It was founded in 2023 by Sean Cook, who cites his mother getting catfished online as the motivation for the app. Tea has taken off in the past week, gaining more than a million users in that time. According to a social media post from Tea, the app has about 4 million users. It’s the second most popular free app in the Apple App Store right now, right after ChatGPT.

Tea is intended to function as a community that keeps women safe, something that traditional dating apps lack. With candid reviews and warnings from other women about people they’ve dated, Tea offers women the security of having a better idea of who they’re dating.

When you open the app, you’ll see local men in your area whose pictures have been uploaded. You’ll also see if the man was labeled as a red or green flag, and any comments left by other women.

You can look up specific names in the search bar and create alerts for names. The app’s capabilities aren’t limited to comments about a man’s «red flags.» Tea can also reverse-search photos to catch catfishers through Tea’s Catfish Finder AI, run background checks, check for criminal histories and public records and look up phone numbers.

Additionally, you can post questions and polls on the Tea app. According to Tea’s website, 10% of its profits go to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

How does Tea know if I’m a woman?

Not just anyone can join the Tea app — it’s for women only. When you make an account, you’ll be asked to provide your location, birth date and a picture of your ID or a selfie to verify that you’re a woman. Then you wait to be approved, which people are saying can take days from the influx of new users.

The Tea app uses AI to verify your identity and ensure you’re a woman. Once approved, you’re anonymous apart from the username you choose. Tea uses SafeSip AI as a moderation tool that detects and removes harmful content from the app to ensure it stays a safe space for women.

Can I join Tea if I’m not a woman?

You can’t join the Tea app if you’re not a woman. However, uploading a picture to ensure you’re a woman is far from a bulletproof way to ensure only women join the app. With filters or AI tools, it’s not clear how often Tea catches things like that.

What are the security risks of Tea?

Tea presents as a safe space to share information because you can’t screenshot in the app, you’re anonymous and it’s verified that all accounts are women.

However, the data breach shows us just how fragile something like this can be. Tea confirmed last week that there was unauthorized access to its legacy data storage system. Approximately 72,000 images were exposed, including 13,000 images of selfies and photo identification women submitted to make an account, and 59,000 images publicly viewable in the app from posts, comments and direct messages.

Tea told CNET that the company has engaged third-party cybersecurity experts to secure its systems.

The concept of Tea is to keep women safe and give them a space to share negative experiences so that others don’t have to go through the same thing. However, there has also been backlash about whether the app violates men’s privacy. On forums like Reddit, some men have shared that posts about them on the app have been false or misleading, and because they’re not allowed on the app, they cannot engage to correct the posts.

In the same way that it could be a safe place for women to share information to keep each other safe, it could potentially become a space where misinformation runs rampant and personal information is shared.

Tea didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the potential for misinformation being spread on its platform, or of the allegations of privacy violations against men. We have also asked Tea whether the platform is heterosexually geared only.

Technologies

Spotify Brings Wrapped Energy Year-Round With Friend-Sharing Stats

The music service introduced new ways for music nerds to share their listening habits with friends.

It can be a long wait for Spotify Wrapped, the end-of-year promotion that allows Spotify users to view and share their listening habits. Now, users can keep an eye on those stats daily, plus share their listening habits with friends.

You can view your Spotify usage statistics every 24 hours and share your updates via social media services, such as Instagram Notes or Spotify Messages. The new share icon gives you access to eight different services where you can post your stats.

Every week, you’ll get updates on your top artists and songs from the past month, and Spotify will recommend new playlists. The app also gives you a «special highlight» based on a specific artist or song.

To access your personal musical data, click on your profile in the top left corner of the app and scroll down to «listening stats.»

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

The new features are somewhat similar to Spotify Wrapped, the service’s annual end-of-year review of users’ listening habits, which is designed to be shared. Every year, Spotify adds extra details to Wrapped, such as assigning users a listening personality or a city that supposedly reflects their music tastes. It’s been the most popular way for Spotify users to view and share their music listening in the past. A number of third-party services do the same thing, including Volt.fm.

Read more: Best Music Streaming Services

Spotify is the world’s largest music streaming service, offering 100 million tracks and serving more than 713 million users. In addition to its $12-per-month subscription service, Spotify also offers a free, ad-supported option.

Technologies

Wordle Gets Personal: You Can Now Make and Share Your Own Puzzles

If you’re a Wordle obsessive, you can now make your own inside joke puzzles to send to friends.

Wordle’s an immensely popular New York Times word game (we post the answers daily), but it’s not the most personal game in the world. Answers such as GUISE and PERIL are tricky, but generic. Now, Wordle fans who have ever dreamed of making their own puzzles can test their friends and family by creating their own Wordle creations up to seven letters in length.

No surprise, you have to be a New York Times Games or All Access Subscriber to use this feature. If you are, you’ll find the Create a Puzzle option available from the top menu above today’s Wordle. While you must be a subscriber to create your own personalized puzzle, you can share it with anyone — they only need the link, not a subscription, to complete your Wordle.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Enter a word, and the site will tell you if it is available. Real Wordle limits you to five-letter words, but the puzzle-making feature lets you choose words between 4 and 7 letters.

The usual dictionary rules apply, and so curse words, some pet names, and obscure inside jokes are essentially out. If your cat is named TANGO, that’s there, but RINGO is not an option. You can drop a proposal with a single word like MARRY, but MARRYME will get rejected since that’s two separate words.

Word chosen, you can then fill out your name and add an optional hint, and the feature will generate your puzzle with a link you can send around. Unlike standard puzzles, your puzzle doesn’t appear to reset after a day, so whoever you send it to doesn’t need to rush to solve it.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Nov. 8, #411

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle No. 411 for Saturday, Nov. 8.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is a tricky one. The theme of the purple category is also a word hidden among the answers, but of course, it doesn’t end up in the purple group. If you’re struggling but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by the Times. It doesn’t show up in the NYT Games app but appears in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Brawl.

Green group hint: The Steel City.

Blue group hint: They once played in Oakland.

Purple group hint: Not always made of cardboard.