The app has never been more popular than in the immediate aftermath of a brand catastrophe.

Tea's investigation of the incident found that app users' direct messages had been breached, along with some of their photos. "Out of an abundance of caution, we have taken the affected system offline," San Francisco-based Tea said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch.

Around 72,000 selfies and ID photos were exposed after being stored in a "legacy data system" containing information from more than two years ago. Recent DMs might also have been accessed.