Tea App Breach Exposes a Common Storage Mistake - Here’s How to Avoid It

Recently, the dating review app Tea made headlines for all the wrong reasons. The company disclosed a data breach involving unauthorized access to a legacy storage system...and the details are troubling.

Roughly 72,000 images - 3,000 verification selfies and photo IDs, plus 59,000 public-facing app images like posts, comments, and direct messages were exposed.

The root cause? A misconfigured Firebase bucket. No encryption. No authentication. Just wide open to the public internet.

This is exactly the type of preventable security lapse that we built Myota to eliminate.

Our Shard & Spread™ architecture is fundamentally different from traditional storage models - and that difference matters when it comes to preventing breaches like this one.

Here’s how:

• 🔐 No exposed buckets - data is instantly sharded, encrypted, and distributed across independent targets. Even if accessed, it’s just useless fragments.
• 🚫 No backups to forget or mismanage - data is immutable by default with no snapshot chains to corrupt or misconfigure.
• 🛡️ Zero trust at the core - shards are meaningless in isolation, and policy-driven access ensures nothing is accessible without explicit authorization.
  

Tea’s breach is a cautionary tale for any company handling sensitive user data - especially in regulated or high-trust environments. A single misconfiguration can destroy user trust and lead to significant legal and financial consequences.

Did you know Myota can save 50% or more on your storage costs, while enhanching your security posture with built-in ransomware immunity? Check out our new storage savings calculator and see the potential savings for yourself.