Tea App Explained: The Women-Only Review App, the Leak, and Where It Stands in October 2026

What is the Tea app, and is it safe to use or safe to be posted on? Tea is a women-only app where members post photos of men they dated or matched with, add "red flag" or "green flag" notes, and ask whether anyone else knows him. It also sells background checks, reverse image search, and phone number lookups. In 2025 it went viral, leaked its own users' selfies and IDs, and was pulled from Apple's App Store. In October 2026 it came back to iPhone for a few days, got pulled again, and turned the posts about men back on. Here is what it is now, what people on both sides report, and our honest verdict.

How Tea works

Who can join. Only women, checked by a third party. At its January 2026 web relaunch, Tea said new members send a selfie video or a selfie with a government ID to an outside verification company. The October 2026 iPhone version listed facial age checks at signup.
What members do. Post a man's photo and first name, ask "are we dating the same guy," leave flags and comments, and set alerts for a man's name so they get pinged if someone posts about him.
The paid tools. Background checks, reverse image search to catch catfish, and phone number lookups. On the App Store, Tea listed in-app purchases from $4.99 to $29.99.
What men can see. Nothing. Men cannot join, so a man has no way to see a post about him unless a woman shows him.

The leak and the lawsuits

July 2025: the breach. Right after Tea hit No. 1 on the App Store, hackers got into an old storage system. The company said about 72,000 images leaked, including about 13,000 selfies and photo IDs that women had sent only to prove who they were, plus about 59,000 images from posts, comments, and messages. A second leak exposed more than a million private messages.
What happened next. The BBC found the leaked selfies turned into a "game" where men ranked the women, and maps with about 33,000 pins showing where users lived. One woman who had joined Tea to stay safe from a stalker ex found her exact home address on one of those maps.
October 2025: Apple pulls it. Apple removed Tea and a male copycat app called TeaOnHer, saying they broke its rules on content moderation and privacy, and that it got too many complaints, including posts with minors' personal information. Tea had about 6.1 million downloads at that point.
Court cases now. In the main data breach case in California, both sides told the judge on June 30, 2026 that they had agreed to settle in principle, and they expected to ask for early approval by October 30, 2026. As of October 8, 2026 there was no public amount and no claim form. In a separate Illinois case, a federal judge refused on September 28, 2026 to throw out a claim brought for men whose photos were posted on Tea without their consent, so that part keeps going.

New in the last two months (September and October 2026)

September 15, 2026. An app update removed the "Intel" feed, the part where women post about men. Members were angry, and Tea brought it back the same day.
October 5, 2026: "Tea 2.0." Tea removed the standalone Intel feed, hid old posts, and came back to Apple's App Store as version 3.0. The new version was built around topic and city "communities," and listed screenshot blocking inside the app, automatic screening for bullying and personal details, and report forms that anyone can use without an account. Tea told members that "nothing disappeared," meaning old posts were hidden, not deleted.
October 8 to 9, 2026: pulled again. App Store trackers show Tea was gone from the US App Store again by October 8 to 9. Sites that follow Tea for men say Tea told members Apple would not accept posts warning about men with their photos, no matter where in the app they sat.
October 8, 2026: Intel is back. Tea brought the Intel posts back on its website and Android app and restored the old posts. So the posting about men never really stopped. iPhone users just use the website.
Still updating. The Android app was updated again on October 27, 2026.

What people who used it say

It warned her off a repeat player. A woman just out of an abusive relationship told USA Today in 2025 that she posted about a new man she met, and three women replied that he had invited each of them over, slept with them, and then cut contact. Others said the app helped them learn about assault claims or feel less alone after abuse.
But the posts can be wrong. In 2026, a woman wrote that she found a year old post about her new boyfriend that "did not match his character at all." After a long talk with him, she believed him and started to wonder how many posts were made up by hurt exes.
Moderators push back sometimes. A reviewer said that after she posted about a man who sent her unwanted explicit photos, moderators asked her to take it down because someone close to him said it was false, even though other women backed her up.

What men who were posted say

One bad date, then 50 red flags. Early in 2026, a college student wrote that he had a few flags that nobody cared about until he ended things after one date. The woman then posted their texts and a claim that he was fired for harassing women, which his old boss told him was not true. He ended up with about 50 red flags across two posts, said strangers recognized and mocked him in public, and said women he dated kept dropping him once they found it.
Removal is slow, and someone wants to sell it to you. Another man wrote that a comment on his post falsely accused him of assault. He emailed Tea, tried copyright claims, and sent his own cease and desist letters, and got almost nowhere. A paid removal company quoted him $750 to take the post down and $250 more to keep it from coming back, and pushed him to decide fast.

Lesser-known points

Hidden is not deleted. Tea's own October 5 message said old posts were still stored. Three days later they were visible again. Treat anything posted on Tea as permanent.
Screenshot blocking does not stop a second phone. It only stops screenshots inside the app. Posts and comments still get photographed and shared to group chats.
The people writing about Tea for men are often selling something. Many of the up to date Tea news pages are run by companies that sell Tea lookups or removal. Their facts can be right, but they have a reason to make you scared.
Anyone can ask for a review. Tea says people who are not members can ask for a post to be reviewed through forms on its website. Free first, before you pay anyone.
Your verification selfie is the risky part. The 2025 leak was mostly selfies and IDs that women were promised would be deleted. Any app that asks for your face and ID is only as safe as its oldest server.
The best free checks do not need Tea. A reverse image search of his photos, a quick look at the public sex offender registry, and a first date in a public place cover the biggest risks without posting anyone.

Our verdict

Tea is a gossip board with a safety label on the door. Some of what it surfaces is real and important: a man who is married, a man who uses the same script on five women, a man with a record. But anonymous, one sided posts with no proof are not facts, and the app's track record on protecting its own users' faces and IDs is bad. If you are a woman, use it as a hint, not a verdict, and never upload anything you would not want leaked. If you are a man, the uncomfortable truth is that there is no way to stop being posted, and fighting it in public tends to make it worse. What you can control is how you come across from the start, and The Face They See lets people of the opposite gender rank your photos for free so you know what first impression you are giving.

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