Category: Tech News Feed

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — An artificial intelligence data center that would use more electricity than every home in Wyoming combined before expanding to as much as five times that size will be built soon near Cheyenne, according to the city’s mayor.

“It’s a game changer. It’s huge,” Mayor Patrick Collins said Monday.

With cool weather — good for keeping computer temperatures down — and an abundance of inexpensive electricity from a top energy-producing state, Wyoming’s capital has become a hub of computing power.

The city has been home to Microsoft data centers since 2012. An $800 million data center announced last year by Facebook parent company Meta Platforms is nearing completion, Collins said.

The latest data center, a joint effort between regional energy infrastructure company Tallgrass and AI data center developer Crusoe, would begin at 1.8 gigawatts of electricity and be scalable to 10 gigawatts, according to a joint company statement.

A gigawatt can power as many as 1 million homes. But that’s more homes than Wyoming has people. The least populated state, Wyoming, has about 590,000 people.

And it’s a major exporter of energy. A top producer of coal, oil and gas, Wyoming ranks behind only Texas, New Mexico and Pennsylvania as a top net energy-producing state, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Accounting for fossil fuels, Wyoming produces about 12 times more energy than it consumes. The state exports almost three-fifths of the electricity it produces, according to the EIA.

But this proposed data center is so big, it would have its own dedicated energy from gas generation and renewable sources, according to Collins and company officials.

Gov. Mark Gordon praised the project’s value to the state’s gas industry.

“This is exciting news for Wyoming and for Wyoming natural gas producers,” Gordon said in the statement.

While data centers are energy-hungry, experts say companies can help reduce their effect on the climate by powering them with renewable energy rather than fossil fuels. Even so, electricity customers might see their bills increase as utilities plan for massive data projects on the grid.

The data center would be built several miles (kilometers) south of Cheyenne off U.S. 85 near the Colorado state line. State and local regulators would need to sign off on the project, but Collins was optimistic construction could begin soon.

“I believe their plans are to go sooner rather than later,” Collins said.

OpenAI, the developer of Chat GPT, has been scouring the U.S. for sites for a massive AI data center effort called Stargate, but a Crusoe spokesperson declined to say if the Cheyenne project was one.

“We are not at a stage that we are ready to announce our tenant there,” said the spokesperson, Andrew Schmitt. “I can’t confirm or deny that is going to be one of the stargate.”

Recently, OpenAI announced it had switched on the first phase of a Crusoe-built data center complex in Abilene, Texas, in a partnership with software giant Oracle.

“To the best of our knowledge, it is the largest data center — we think of it as a campus — in the world,” OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane told The Associated Press last week. “It generates, roughly and depending how you count, about a gigawatt of energy.”

OpenAI has also been looking elsewhere in the U.S. to expand its data centers. It said last week that it has entered into an agreement with Oracle to develop another 4.5 gigawatts of data center capacity.

“We’re now in a position where we have, in a really concrete way, identified over five gigawatts of energy that we’re going to be able to build around,” Lehane said.

OpenAI hasn’t named any locations, besides its flagship site in Texas, where it plans to build data centers.

As of earlier this year, Wyoming was not one of the 16 states where OpenAI said it was looking for locations to build new data centers.

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O’Brien reported from Austin, Texas.

Robotaxi pioneer Waymo has added Dallas to its expanding list of cities where people will be able to request a driverless ride beginning sometime next year in attempt to further distance itself from rivals still scrambling to catch up in the autonomous race.

Dallas will become the second major Texas city where Waymo’s robotaxis, following the company’s move into Austin earlier this year as part of a partnership with ride-hailing leader Uber.

Unlike the Austin driverless rides that must be ordered through Uber’s app, Waymo will deploy its Dallas robotaxis through its own service and team up with the Avis Budget Group to manage its fleet there. Waymo hasn’t set an exact date in 2026 for when its robotaxis will begin cruising through Dallas, which joins Washington D.C. and Miami as cities where the company plans to expand next year.

Waymo’s robotaxis have already provided more than 250,000 trips in Austin and several other major U.S. cities, including Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Atlanta.

As the company continues to expand into new cities, it is pulling even further ahead from the rest of the pack trying to launch driverless ride-hailing services.

The aspiring rivals include Tesla, which launched a limited robotaxi service in Austin last month as a prelude to what CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly promised will be a nationwide fleet of driverless cars, even as the automaker faces legal challenges questioning the capability of its autonomous technology.

Amazon is also aiming to roll out robotaxis in Las Vegas late this year as part of its Zoox self-driving division. And Uber and Lyft have been relying on a variety of partnerships to supplement their fleet of human-driven vehicles with more driverless options.

While others are still trying to get their robotaxis out of the starting blocks, it has been nearly five years since Waymo’s driverless ride-hailing service made its debut in Phoenix with a technology that began as a secret project within Google in 2009. Waymo spun out from Google in 2016, but the two companies remain tethered under the same corporate parent, Alphabet Inc.

Waymo is still testing the possibility of bringing its robotaxis to at least two other Texas cities — Houston and San Antonio — while also exploring a potential expansion in San Diego, Boston and New York. It is also eyeing Tokyo as its first robotaxi market outside the U.S.

EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Dozens of dairy cattle were on the moo-ve Monday at Michigan State University.

About 80 cows hoofed it to their new home, the Dairy Cattle Teaching and Research Center, a $75 million facility the East Lansing school says will allow agriculture, veterinary and other students to learn on a modern farm that’s equipped to replicate the most high-tech operations in the world.

George Smith, who heads up Michigan State’s AgBioResearch department, called it a “21st century cattle drive.” Crews erected a fence between the two buildings and herded the animals via claps, calls and whistles.

The remaining 180 cows are expected to be herded to the new building on Tuesday.

Michigan’s dairy industry leads the nation in milk production per cow, according to Smith, adding dairy also is the No. 1 contributor to the state’s agricultural economy.

The new complex is significantly larger than the existing dairy farm, which was constructed in the 1960s and was so limited in space and equipment that researchers have a backlog of up to two years on funded projects.

The existing MSU Dairy Cattle Teaching and Research Center currently houses 250 dairy cattle and supports the research of faculty in the colleges of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Veterinary Medicine. The new facility features a 165,000-square-foot cattle barn that will expand research capacity by increasing herd size to 680. Those cows will arrive in batches in the coming weeks and months. The new space also includes modernized barns, feed centers, milking parlors and labs.

“Our old facility didn’t have the technical capabilities to be able to train our students for what to expect when they graduated, what dairy cattle production looks like today,” Kim Dodd, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine, said Monday.

The new digs are opening at a time when other land grant universities in the agricultural Midwest are scrapping their dairy cattle teaching programs.

“While other institutions are disinvesting in dairy programs, we are investing in the future of the dairy industry in the state of Michigan, because it’s so critical to the state’s agricultural economy,” Smith said.

A $30 million investment by the State of Michigan provided the initial funding for the 18-month project, with the rest being contributed by alumni, donors and stakeholders in the dairy industry.

“Who doesn’t love ice cream,” Smith said. “Who can’t get excited about new opportunities in the field of dairy science?”

A cyberattack on Russian state-owned flagship carrier Aeroflot caused a mass outage to the company’s computer systems on Monday, Russia’s prosecutor’s office said, forcing the airline to cancel more than 100 flights and delay others.

Ukrainian hacker group Silent Crow and Belarusian hacker activist group the Belarus Cyber-Partisans, which opposes the rule of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, claimed responsibility for the cyberattack.

It is one of the most disruptive cyberattacks to hit Russia since the start of the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Previous attacks have targeted Russian government websites and other major Russian companies — noteably the state-owned Russian Railways — but normal services have resumed within hours.

Images shared on social media showed hundreds of delayed passengers crowding Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, where Aeroflot is based. The outage also disrupted flights operated by Aeroflot’s subsidiaries, Rossiya and Pobeda.

While most of the flights affected were domestic, the disruption also led to cancellations for some international flights to Belarus, Armenia and Uzbekistan.

In a statement released early Monday, Aeroflot warned passengers that the company’s information technology system was experiencing unspecified difficulties and that disruption could follow.

Russia’s Prosecutor’s Office later confirmed that a cyberattack had caused the outage and that it had opened a criminal investigation.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called reports of the cyberattack “quite alarming,” adding that “the hacker threat is a threat that remains for all large companies providing services to the general public.”

Silent Crow claimed it had accessed Aeroflot’s corporate network for a year, copying customer and internal data, including audio recordings of phone calls, data from the company’s own surveillance on employees and other intercepted communications.

“All of these resources are now inaccessible or destroyed and restoring them will possibly require tens of millions of dollars. The damage is strategic,” the channel purporting to be the Silent Crow group wrote on Telegram. There was no way to independently verify its claims.

The same channel also shared screenshots that appeared to show Aeroflot’s internal IT systems, and insinuated that Silent Crow could begin sharing the data it had seized in the coming days.

“The personal data of all Russians who have ever flown with Aeroflot have now also gone on a trip — albeit without luggage and to the same destination,” it said.

The Belarus Cyber-Partisans told The Associated Press that they had hoped to “deliver a crushing blow.” The group has previously claimed responsibility for a number of cyberattacks, and said in April 2024 that they had been able to infiltrate the network of Belarus’ main KGB security agency.

“This is a very large-scale attack and one of the most painful in terms of consequences,” group coordinator Yuliana Shametavets said. She said that the group had been preparing the attack for several months, and were able to penetrate the Aeroflot network by exploiting various vulnerabilities.

Belarus is a close ally of Russia. Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron hand for more than 30 years and has relied on Russian subsidies and support, allowed Russia to use his country’s territory to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, and to deploy some of Moscow’s tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

Russia’s airports have repeatedly faced mass delays over the summer as a result of Ukrainian drone attacks, with flights grounded amid safety concerns.

LONDON (AP) — Chinese online retailer Temu was accused by European Union watchdogs on Monday of failing to prevent the sale of illegal products on its platform.

The preliminary findings follow an investigation opened last year under the bloc’s Digital Services Act. It’s a wide-ranging rulebook that requires online platforms to do more to keep internet users safe, with the threat of hefty fines.

The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive branch, said its investigation found “a high risk for consumers in the EU to encounter illegal products” on Temu’s site.

Investigators carried out a “mystery shopping exercise” that found “non-compliant” products on Temu, including baby toys and small electronics, it said.

Temu said in a brief statement that it “will continue to cooperate fully with the Commission.”

The commission didn’t specify why exactly the products were illegal, but noted that a surge in online sales in the bloc also came with a parallel rise in unsafe or counterfeit goods.

EU regulators said when they opened the investigation that they would look into whether Temu was doing enough to crack down on “rogue traders” selling “non-compliant goods” amid concerns that they are able to swiftly reappear after being suspended.

In its preliminary findings, the Commission found that Temu could have had “inadequate mitigation measures” because the company was using an “inaccurate” risk assessment that relied on general industry information, rather than specifics about its own marketplace.

“We shop online because we trust that products sold in our Single Market are safe and comply with our rules,” Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said in a news release. “In our preliminary view, Temu is far from assessing risks for its users at the standards required by the Digital Services Act.

Temu has grown in popularity by offering cheap goods – from clothing to home products — shipped from sellers in China. The company, owned by Pinduoduo Inc., a popular e-commerce site in China, has 92 million users in the EU.

The company will have the chance to examine the Commission’s investigation files and respond to the accusations before the EU watchdogs make a final decision.

Violations of the DSA could result in fines of up to 6% of a company’s annual global revenue and an order to fix the problems.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The phone rings. It’s the secretary of state calling. Or is it?

For Washington insiders, seeing and hearing is no longer believing, thanks to a spate of recent incidents involving deepfakes impersonating top officials in President Donald Trump’s administration.

Digital fakes are coming for corporate America, too, as criminal gangs and hackers associated with adversaries including North Korea use synthetic video and audio to impersonate CEOs and low-level job candidates to gain access to critical systems or business secrets.

Thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, creating realistic deepfakes is easier than ever, causing security problems for governments, businesses and private individuals and making trust the most valuable currency of the digital age.

Responding to the challenge will require laws, better digital literacy and technical solutions that fight AI with more AI.

“As humans, we are remarkably susceptible to deception,” said Vijay Balasubramaniyan, CEO and founder of the tech firm Pindrop Security. But he believes solutions to the challenge of deepfakes may be within reach: “We are going to fight back.”

AI deepfakes become a national security threat

This summer, someone used AI to create a deepfake of Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an attempt to reach out to foreign ministers, a U.S. senator and a governor over text, voice mail and the Signal messaging app.

In May someone impersonated Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles.

Another phony Rubio had popped up in a deepfake earlier this year, saying he wanted to cut off Ukraine’s access to Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service. Ukraine’s government later rebutted the false claim.

The national security implications are huge: People who think they’re chatting with Rubio or Wiles, for instance, might discuss sensitive information about diplomatic negotiations or military strategy.

“You’re either trying to extract sensitive secrets or competitive information or you’re going after access, to an email server or other sensitive network,” Kinny Chan, CEO of the cybersecurity firm QiD, said of the possible motivations.

Synthetic media can also aim to alter behavior. Last year, Democratic voters in New Hampshire received a robocall urging them not to vote in the state’s upcoming primary. The voice on the call sounded suspiciously like then-President Joe Biden but was actually created using AI.

Their ability to deceive makes AI deepfakes a potent weapon for foreign actors. Both Russia and China have used disinformation and propaganda directed at Americans as a way of undermining trust in democratic alliances and institutions.

Steven Kramer, the political consultant who admitted sending the fake Biden robocalls, said he wanted to send a message of the dangers deepfakes pose to the American political system. Kramer was acquitted last month of charges of voter suppression and impersonating a candidate.

“I did what I did for $500,” Kramer said. “Can you imagine what would happen if the Chinese government decided to do this?”

Scammers target the financial industry with deepfakes

The greater availability and sophistication of the programs mean deepfakes are increasingly used for corporate espionage and garden variety fraud.

“The financial industry is right in the crosshairs,” said Jennifer Ewbank, a former deputy director of the CIA who worked on cybersecurity and digital threats. “Even individuals who know each other have been convinced to transfer vast sums of money.”

In the context of corporate espionage, they can be used to impersonate CEOs asking employees to hand over passwords or routing numbers.

Deepfakes can also allow scammers to apply for jobs — and even do them — under an assumed or fake identity. For some this is a way to access sensitive networks, to steal secrets or to install ransomware. Others just want the work and may be working a few similar jobs at different companies at the same time.

Authorities in the U.S. have said that thousands of North Koreans with information technology skills have been dispatched to live abroad, using stolen identities to obtain jobs at tech firms in the U.S. and elsewhere. The workers get access to company networks as well as a paycheck. In some cases, the workers install ransomware that can be later used to extort even more money.

The schemes have generated billions of dollars for the North Korean government.

Within three years, as many as 1 in 4 job applications is expected to be fake, according to research from Adaptive Security, a cybersecurity company.

“We’ve entered an era where anyone with a laptop and access to an open-source model can convincingly impersonate a real person,” said Brian Long, Adaptive’s CEO. “It’s no longer about hacking systems — it’s about hacking trust.”

Experts deploy AI to fight back against AI

Researchers, public policy experts and technology companies are now investigating the best ways of addressing the economic, political and social challenges posed by deepfakes.

New regulations could require tech companies to do more to identify, label and potentially remove deepfakes on their platforms. Lawmakers could also impose greater penalties on those who use digital technology to deceive others — if they can be caught.

Greater investments in digital literacy could also boost people’s immunity to online deception by teaching them ways to spot fake media and avoid falling prey to scammers.

The best tool for catching AI may be another AI program, one trained to sniff out the tiny flaws in deepfakes that would go unnoticed by a person.

Systems like Pindrop’s analyze millions of datapoints in any person’s speech to quickly identify irregularities. The system can be used during job interviews or other video conferences to detect if the person is using voice cloning software, for instance.

Similar programs may one day be commonplace, running in the background as people chat with colleagues and loved ones online. Someday, deepfakes may go the way of email spam, a technological challenge that once threatened to upend the usefulness of email, said Balasubramaniyan, Pindrop’s CEO.

“You can take the defeatist view and say we’re going to be subservient to disinformation,” he said. “But that’s not going to happen.”

Benicio Del Toro starring in Wes Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme”and Reneé Rapp’s second studio album are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.

Also among the streaming offerings worth your time, as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: Jason Momoa brings his passion project “Chief of War” to Apple TV+, there’s a coxy Hobbit video game in Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings Game and “Project Runway” tries out a new network home for its 21st season.

New movies to stream from July 28-Aug. 3

– Wes Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme” (streaming now on Peacock) stars Benicio Del Toro as Anatole “Zsa-zsa” Korda, a wealthy and unscrupulous European industrialist. After the latest assassination attempt on his life, he decides to leave his estate to one of his many children, Lisel (Mia Threapleton), a novitiate. Michael Cera co-stars as a Norwegian insect expert named Bjørn. In her review, the AP’s Jocelyn Noveck wrote that the film finds Anderson “becoming even more, well, Wes Anderson than before.”

– The Netflix romance “My Oxford Year” (streaming Friday) follows a young American student named Anna (Sofia Carson) in her long-dreamt-of year at Oxford University. Corey Mylchreest co-stars as a local love interest in the film directed by Iain Morris.

– Movie soundtracks once played so much more of a role in popular culture. “’90s Soundtrack Movies,” a new series on the Criterion Channel collects some of the films from the soundtrack’s heyday, the 1990s, when songs from movies like “Trainspotting” (1996) and “Singles” (1992) dominated the airwaves and MTV. Also running this month on Criterion are “Grosse Pointe Blank” (1997), “So I Married an Axe Murderer” (1993) and “Judgement Night” (1993).

— AP Film Writer Jake Coyle

New music to stream from July 28-Aug. 3

— The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll has returned. On Friday, to celebrate what would’ve been Elvis Presley’s 90th birthday year, a massive collection of 89 rarities will be released as a five-disc CD boxset – and on all digital platforms. Titled “Sunset Boulevard,” the series pulls from Presley’s 1970-1975 Los Angeles recording sessions and rehearsals at RCA’s studios. There is no greater gift for the Elvis aficionado.

— Reneé Rapp will release her second studio album on Friday, the appropriately titled “Bite Me.” The 12-track release is imbued with Rapp’s edgy, lighthearted spirit — catchy R&B-pop songs about bad breakups and good hookups abound. It’ll put some pep in your step.

— AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

New series to stream from July 28-Aug. 3

— “Project Runway” has had quite a life since it debuted in 2004 on Bravo. After its first six seasons, the competition show about fashion design moved to Lifetime for 11 seasons, then back to Bravo for a few years, and its new home for season 21 is Freeform. Christian Siriano — who won the show’s fourth season — is an executive producer, mentor and judge. He joins “Project Runway” OG host Heidi Klum, celebrity stylist extraordinaire Law Roach and fashion editor Nina Garcia. It premieres Thursday and streams on Disney+ and Hulu.

— Comedian Leanne Morgan stars in her own multi-cam sitcom for Netflix called “Leanne,” debuting Thursday. Inspired by her own stand-up, Morgan plays a woman whose husband leaves her for another woman after more than three decades of marriage. Morgan stars alongside sitcom vets Kristen Johnston and Tim Daly.

— Anthony Mackie’s “Twisted Metal” is back on Peacock for a second season of beginning Thursday. The show is adapted from a popular video game franchise and picks up about 7 months after the events of season one.

—Jason Momoa brings his passion project “Chief of War” to Apple TV+ on Friday. Set in the late 18th century, Momoa plays Kauai, a nobleman and warrior, who plays a major part in the unification of the Hawaiian islands. The series is based on true events and is told from an Indigenous point-of-view.

— Alicia Rancilio

New video games to play from July 28-Aug. 3

— Games set in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth usually want to drag us back to Mount Doom for another confrontation with the Dark Lord. But what if you’re a Hobbit who just wants to hang out with your friends in your peaceful village? That’s your mission in Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings Game. It’s a cozy sim from Weta Workshop, the company behind the special effects in Peter Jackson’s films. You can grow a garden, go fishing, trade with your neighbors and — most important for a Hobbit — cook and eat. It’s about as far from Mordor as it gets, and you can start decorating your own Hobbit Hole on Tuesday on PlayStation 5, Xbox X/S, Switch or PC.

— Lou Kesten

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Hackers gained access to personal data on the majority of the 1.4 million customers of Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, the company confirmed Saturday.

Minneapolis-based Allianz Life, a subsidiary of Munich, Germany-based Allianz SE, said the data breach happened on July 16 when a “malicious threat actor” gained access to a third-party, cloud-based system used by the company.

“The threat actor was able to obtain personally identifiable data related to the majority of Allianz Life’s customers, financial professionals, and select Allianz Life employees, using a social engineering technique,” Allianz Life said in a statement. “We took immediate action to contain and mitigate the issue and notified the FBI.”

The company said its own systems were not accessed, just the third-party’s platform.

Allianz Life said its investigation is ongoing and that the company has begun reaching out to the impacted individuals. It said the incident involves only Allianz Life in the U.S., not other Allianz corporate entities.

In the case of data breaches, a “social engineering technique” usually involves using trickery to gain access. Spokesman Brett Weinberg said he couldn’t provide details because they are still investigating.

Allianz Life also reported the breach to multiple other authorities, including the Maine Attorney General’s Office. A filing on the agency’s website said the company discovered the breach the day after it happened, and that it will be offering those affected 24 months of identity theft protection and credit monitoring.

Allianz Life was known as North American Life and Casualty until it was acquired by German conglomerate Allianz SE in 1979 and changed its name to Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America. It has nearly 2,000 employees in U.S., with the majority working in Minnesota, according to its website.

It is one of five North American subsidiaries of the Munich-based global financial services group Allianz SE, which says it serves more than 125 million customers worldwide.

Tea, a provocative dating app designed to let women anonymously ask or warn each other about men they’d encountered, rocketed to the top spot on the U.S. Apple App Store this week. On Friday, the company behind the app confirmed it had been hacked: Thousands of images, including selfies, were leaked online.

“We have engaged third-party cybersecurity experts and are working around the clock to secure our systems,” San Francisco-based Tea Dating Advice Inc. said in a statement.

404 Media, which earlier reported the breach, said it was 4Chan users who discovered an exposed database that “allowed anyone to access the material” from Tea.

The app and the breach highlight the fraught nature of seeking romance in the age of social media.

Here’s what to know:

Tea was meant to help women date safely

Tea founder Sean Cook, a software engineer who previously worked at Salesforce and Shutterfly, says on the app’s website that he founded the company in 2022 after witnessing his own mother’s “terrifying” experiences. Cook said they included unknowingly dating men with criminal records and being ”catfished” — deceived by men using false identities.

Tea markets itself as a safe way for women to anonymously vet men they might meet on dating apps such as Tinder or Bumble — ensuring that the men are who they say they are, not criminals and not already married or in a relationship. “It’s like people have their own little Yelp pages,” said Aaron Minc, whose Cleveland firm, Minc Law, specializes in cases involving online defamation and harassment.

In an Apple Store review, one woman wrote that she used a Tea search to investigate a man she’d begun talking to and discovered “over 20 red flags, including serious allegations like assault and recording women without their consent.” She said she cut off communication. ”I can’t imagine how things could’ve gone had I not known,” she wrote.

A surge in social media attention over the past week pushed Tea to the No. 1 spot on Apple’s U.S. App Store as of July 24, according to Sensor Tower, a research firm. In the seven days from July 17-23, Tea downloads shot up 525% compared to the week before. Tea said in an Instagram post that it had reached 4 million users.

Tea has been criticized for invading men’s privacy

A female columnist for The Times of London newspaper, who signed into the app, on Thursday called Tea a “man-shaming site” and complained that ”this is simply vigilante justice, entirely reliant on the scruples of anonymous women. With Tea on the scene, what man would ever dare date a woman again?”

“Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve gotten hundreds of calls on it. It’s blown up,” attorney Minc said. “People are upset. They’re getting named. They’re getting shamed.’’

In 1996, Congress passed legislation protecting websites and apps from liability for things posted by their users. But the users can be sued for spreading ”false and defamatory” information, Minc said.

In May, however, a federal judge in Illinois threw out an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit by a man who’d been criticized by women in the Facebook chat group “Are We Dating the Same Guy,″ Bloomberg Law reported.

State privacy laws could offer another avenue for bringing legal action against someone who posted your photograph or other personal information in a harmful way, Minc said.

The breach exposed thousands of selfies and photo IDs

In its statement, Tea reported that about 72,000 images were leaked online, including 13,000 images of selfies or photo identification that users submitted during account verification. Another 59,000 images that were publicly viewable in the app from posts, comments and direct messages were also accessed, according to the company’s statement.

No email addresses or phone numbers were exposed, the company said, and the breach only affects users who signed up before February 2024. “At this time, there is no evidence to suggest that additional user data was affected. Protecting tea users’ privacy and data is our highest priority,” Tea said.

It said users did not need to change their passwords or delete their accounts. “All data has been secured.”

Lawyer Minc said he was not surprised to see Tea get targeted. “These sites get attacked,” he said. ”They create enemies. They put targets on themselves where people want to go after them.”

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Tea, an app designed to let women safely discuss men they date has been breached, with thousands of selfies and photo IDs of users exposed, the company confirmed on Friday.

Tea said that about 72,000 images were leaked online, including 13,000 images of selfies or selfies featuring a photo identification that users submitted during account verification. Another 59,000 images publicly viewable in the app from posts, comments and direct messages were also accessed without authorization, according to a Tea spokesperson.

No email addresses or phone numbers were accessed, the company said, and the breach only affects users who signed up before February 2024.

“Tea has engaged third-party cybersecurity experts and are working around the clock to secure its systems,” the company said. “At this time, there is no evidence to suggest that additional user data was affected. Protecting tea users’ privacy and data is their highest priority.”

Tea presents itself as a safe way for women to anonymously vet men they might connect with on dating apps such as Tinder or Bumble — ensuring that your date is “safe, not a catfish, and not in a relationship.”

“Tea is a must-have app, helping women avoid red flags before the first date with dating advice, and showing them who’s really behind the profile of the person they’re dating,” reads Tea’s app store description.

404 Media, which earlier reported the breach, said it was 4Chan users who discovered an exposed database that “allowed anyone to access the material” from Tea.

“While reporting this story, a URL the 4chan user posted included a voluminous list of specific attachments associated with the Tea app. 404 Media saw this list of files. In the last hour or so, that page was locked down, and now returns a “Permission denied” error,” 404 Media reported Friday.

Tea said in an Instagram post this week that it has reached 4 million users.