Privacy Breaches, Dating App Safety, and AI - Oh My!

How We Ended up with the Tea App Breach and What Are the Alternatives

It was revealed a few days ago that the Tea app that allows women to rate male daters and run them through a "Catfish Finder AI" got hacked. Over 72,000 selfies, ID pictures, and other user images were apparently exposed in the process. Then it turned out that users' direct messages about sensitive topics such as abortions or cheating were revealed as well.

It's easy to dismiss this incident as another instance of a private company failing to safeguard user data properly. But it's worth asking first how we got here. Safety apps such as Tea and social media groups that seek to protect people from dating app abuse have been labeled "vigilante justice." Why do we have this highly imperfect system of reporting abusive dating app behavior, however, along with tenuous frameworks of data storage?

In short, because current dating app use, in a largely unregulated environment, is dangerous yet often unavoidable if one wants to find a romantic partner. Some data suggests that one in three women who have used dating apps have experienced sexual assault as a result. As I discuss in my scholarship (such as in my forthcoming article "Tinder Backgrounds" here), the law currently does little to address or prevent this and other related forms of abuse.

So is it any wonder that dating app users, including especially women, have resorted to self-help in the form of online gossip networks? Most of the writers who attack these types of self-help offer little by way of alternatives and seem mainly focused on the privacy harms to the men being posted at the expense of the physical and other harms to the women who have few other options to warn others. As I argue in "Tinder Backgrounds," this will not change until we create mandated mechanisms on dating apps that would--unlike the Tea app--ensure that the data being collected for purposes of identification and background checks is stored in keeping with recognized safety standards.

Hence, the Tea app breach is actually illustrative of the exact opposite of what it seems at first. In addition to all the other harms it creates, the current lack of regulation of dating apps is hurting privacy rather than helping it.

Comments

[John F. Carr]

According to early media coverage the leaked messages were about cheating boyfriends rather than sexual assault.

Regulation is probably going to work like Obama-era Title IX guidelines: All complaints must result in the man being banned.

[Social Justice is neither]

The word hack is also a bit dishonest. Apparently everything that was lifted was in a publicly available location with no security or encryption so downloaded is more correct.

[Dr. Ed 2]

What would the libel laws say about that?

[Supremacy Claus]

This post is a good analysis of another failure of the lawyer profession, dating app law. A great technology bringing disparate people together is being spoiled by a million scams, and $30 billion in losses. The lawyer profession does nothing about it. The principles of premises security liability should apply to dating sites. Force them to compensate the victims of scams. To deter.

Females are weak. The only way they can protect themselves is to have tools. If females defend themselves, they will be arrested. The lawyer always protects the criminal and arrests the victim defending herself.

Cancel the lawyer profession. Then incapacitate the scammers. The best, cheapest incapacitation is death, of course. Females will never be safe until the lawyer profession protecting, enabling, and empowering the criminal is cancelled.

[AmosArch]

There might be some discussions about dangerous men but from what I've seen its mostly a gossip and Doxing platform for women to trash and mock guys they don't like similar to the Are We Dating The Same Guy Facebook groups, under the guise of safety.

There were similar sites for men to discuss women but they have generally been banned off the major platforms while the women's groups have been allowed to stay.

[Longtobefree]

Clearly what we need is common sense app control.
This app should work in reverse. Men should be allowed to know if a woman has used this app, and thereby be warned to stay away.

[Incunabulum]

You have seen their pictures - blue hair, fat, nose ring, all nature's warning signs.

[Aubrey LaVentana]

Aposematism.

[TextFirst]

A bunch of people signed up for an app so they could dox and gossip about people. Turns out that they got doxxed and gossiped about. Rarely is justice so instant and poetic.

[Aubrey LaVentana]

it's in the app's name. Tea, as in spilling the tea.

[JonFrum]

HOES EXPOSED!

[John F. Carr]

"Some data suggests that one in three women who have used dating apps have experienced sexual assault as a result."

This is not far off from commonly quoted figures for real life. I think it was one in four.

[Brett Bellmore]

And is just as false as the commonly quoted figure, I'd guess.

[JustMark]

Here's one that claims 2 in 5 of all women--not just those using apps. https://www.aafp.org/pubs/afp/issues/2021/0201/p168.html
>Widespread underreporting of sexual assault impacts estimates of incidence and prevalence. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey reported that 43.6% of women experienced sexual violence in their lifetimes, with one in five women experiencing rape or attempted rape.4 Fifty to 80% of sexual assaults are committed by a person known to the survivor.5,6 This article focuses on women; however, sexual violence is increasingly reported among men, with one in four experiencing sexual violence during their lifetimes.4

[Raccroc]

Sooo more Government is the answer?

No. What is needed is some enterprising entrepreneur or some non-profit consortium to create a compliance suite and certification for these sorts of websites... see PCI CSS compliance for taking credit cards an example.

VPN software, anti-virus software, password managers, and a whole slew of other vendors manage to get 3rd party audits or certifications to ensure safety. No reason dating type apps couldn't do the same if there is a desire for it and there is no need to involve The Man. Enough of these types of breeches and demand will come from the customers (especially if one does it and markets that fact).

[TwelveInchPianist]

“Some data suggests that one in three women who have used dating apps have experienced sexual assault as a result.”

My God. Isn’t anybody warning these women, so they can stay off of these apps?

Maybe we need to eliminate some of the barriers we’ve erected that discourage dating in safer places, like the workplace. I mean, it might make someone feel uncomfortable to get asked out at work, but it beats getting raped.

I’m still shocked that we re-opened colleges after Covid, given the oft-cited stat that one in four women in college get raped.

[Dr. Ed 2]

I have seen one in two....

[Lee Moore]

There used to be a very powerful app called “The Parental Units” which used to fix up potential partners for young inexperienced daters.

But that was done for 16-19 year olds after which time they’d be married.

But now the zeitgeist is to continue your teens into your mid 30s we have lotsa daters who imagine they have a clue about whether this or that guy is good dating material. Things are bound to go wrong.

Incidentally I saw a little video on YouTube recently in which a French lady was bemoaning her inability to get her boyfriend to settle down. Or strictly stop intermittently ghosting her. She was stunningly attractive and one has to make allowances for her weepiness in the circumstances.

But all was revealed when she mentioned that she was….50. Certainly didn’t look it but even so if you’re after a guy who other gals want then you really have to get him signed up a bit earlier. Get your dating all done by 25 at the latest. The Parental Units can help you here.

[Aubrey LaVentana]

Maybe a prohibition on using filters on photos uploaded to dating apps?

[Incunabulum]

The Tea app wasn't breached.

You can't breach security that didn't exist. You can't hack publicly available and unencrypted data.

This isn't even like someone walking in through your unlocked door - it's like if you left your stuff in a garbage bag in the street

[Incunabulum]

>Some data suggests that one in three women who have used

I am going to say that if the 'data suggesr' rather than 'clearly shows' the the definitions are being twisted to get the data to support a conclusion.

If 1/3 of women were being sexually assaulted you wouldn't see them all on dating apps - women aren't stupid. This means the definition of 'sexual assault' is being watered down to include anything.

[Social Justice is neither]

Look, feeling used 5 days after your voluntary one night stand is sexual assault because the woman didn't get everything her way. Receiving gross, objectifying messages on an app for hook-ups is sexual assault. Yes, the definition has been watered down to uselessness by evil feminists like Irina.

[damikesc]

My same argument went with the idiotic "1 in 4 women on college campuses get raped".

If it was remotely true, you would not have any women on campus.

Apps like this for men would not be permitted on any platform. Because, lord knows, women are incapable of ruining a life...

[Incunabulum]

>he law currently does little to address or prevent this and other related forms of abuse.

Seriously?

1. It's not the purpose of the law to prevent things. The can not do that. It can only act after the fact.

2. The law does address sexual assault. Very harshly. The idea that the law doesn't . . . The author isn't a lawyer I hope.

[damikesc]

Indeed.

[gormadoc]

"Some data suggests"
No, it doesn't. The article itself says that it doesn't because it's not a representative sample. There are tens of millions of people using dating apps, more than five million on Tinder alone. You would have to believe that millions of women have been sexually assaulted and less than two hundred of them reported it.

[Social Justice is neither]

The girlmath of sexual assault.

[Aubrey LaVentana]

has any prosecutor subpoenaed a dating app to investigate a woman's claim to have been assaulted by a dating app contact?

[vaadu]

If there was a guys only app with the same purpose, how long would it last on the app stores before made-up accusations of misogyny or sexual harassment had it shut down?

[Raccroc]

Well, one of them became one of the largest companies in history... Facemash, aka The Facebook, aka Facebook, aka Meta was originally at place for dudes to go to rate classmates as hot or not.

There have also been several apps where dudes could post if dates put out or not and such things. Most fade quickly and never seem to reach the viral status needed for longevity. Also, things like Tinder put a lot of them under, since the whole purpose of that app is for getting folks together with the express purpose of putting out.

[ryop]

> Some data suggest[] that one in three women who have used dating apps have experienced sexual assault as a result.

Those data are from a non–peer reviewed popular journalism piece, based on an Internet survey of a nonrepresentative sample of women who may not have used a dating app in over a decade. You have no evidence that those data represent the population proportion of sexual assaults among dating app users. The authors themselves state that their "results…are not generalizable and cannot be extrapolated to all online dating subscribers."

Even the other data set in same piece contradicts the survey result. Consider a pessimistic estimate of a 23% reporting rate (the lowest yearly point estimate from the NCVS in 2009-2019, the same time period as the database; lower than the 31% RAINN statistic you cite in your paper) as well as Pew's July 2022 estimate that 9% of US adults (~23 million) are current or recent dating app users and convert the 31% lifetime rate to an annual incidence of 2.4% under the maximally pessimistic assumptions that every respondent used the app for all 15 years and assaults were independent. CJI should have found at least 1.3 million reported cases of sexual assault of dating app users over the decade they investigated. They found 157, a four-order-of-magnitude difference you can't explain.

External validity aside, you have no evidence CJI's definition of sexual assault matches your own, since CJI does not provide one. The authors declined to publish the actual questionnaire, instead claiming the "questions meant to describe acts of sexual assault and rape" and were created by unnamed experts, based on CJI's undisclosed definition of sexual assault. Definitions of sexual assault vary significantly across jurisdictions and disciplines, and it's vanishingly unlikely your understanding of the term is identical.

Granting for the sake of argument that the data are externally valid and your definitions coincide, this statistic doesn't support your claim. To prove dating apps are "dangerous yet often unavoidable," you must show that alternatives (e.g., meeting partners in person or via work or friend groups) are just as dangerous and that they are unavailable to most people. If alternatives exist and have lower sexual assault incidence, dating apps aren't "unavoidable" (and indeed, women reveal a preference for them in spite of the increased risk). If alternatives exist and have higher sexual assault incidence, you can hardly claim dating apps are dangerous when their invention created a *safer* option than those available for the rest of human history. You don't even bother to draw the comparison, even though you are aware these alternatives exist and mention them in other contexts in your paper.

Even granting that apps are dangerous and unavoidable, the CJI authors find that "most of the time[,] checking users’ criminal backgrounds alone would not have prevented the problem." Indeed, your paper cites the piece for the stronger proposition in only "10% of…incidents," perpetrators "had been accused or convicted of sexual assault at least once." Even a perfectly-enforced mandate would cure less than half, and perhaps only one tenth, of the alleged sexual assaults, yet you state that "privacy harms to the men…will not change until we create mandated mechanisms" for background checks and conclude that "the current lack of regulation of dating apps is hurting privacy rather than helping it." Thus your (extremely ambitious) claim is that women readily form gossip networks at a 31% sexual assault rate but will definitely stop if that rate drops to 16–28%. You do nothing to demonstrate this claim, either in your paper or this post.