Personal Safety in the Age of Social Media and Dating Apps: Why I Built PhoneTea

Dating apps and social media have made meeting strangers easier than ever. Knowing who you’re actually dealing with hasn’t gotten nearly as easy.

The World Has Changed

The way we meet people has changed dramatically. Dating apps, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and other social media platforms have made it possible for complete strangers to enter our lives almost instantly. You can meet someone online, exchange a few messages, trade phone numbers, and start developing what feels like a genuine connection without ever meeting that person face-to-face.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Social media has connected people who might otherwise have never crossed paths. It’s helped people find relationships, friendships, communities, and opportunities that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. But there’s another side to that convenience that I don’t think we talk about enough.

Just because someone has access to you doesn’t mean they deserve your trust.

I’ve spent years watching how people interact online and some of the things I’ve experienced have completely changed my perspective on personal safety. Now I’m not writing this as some kind of cybersecurity expert who’s spent his entire career studying online threats. I’m writing this as someone who’s experienced enough frustrating, dishonest, and sometimes genuinely dangerous interactions to finally decide that something needed to change. And eventually I decided to try building that change myself.

And I think I’m justified in saying that too. My last few relationships were all with people I met online (or through social media) in one way or another, and those relationships, along with countless other online interactions, have taught me two important things about how society functions today.

Firstly, more people than ever have smartphones and access to social media, which also means more people are meeting and interacting with strangers online. Secondly, the world has more access to our personal information than at practically any other time in history. Friends, family, businesses, advertisers, and complete strangers can all potentially access pieces of our digital lives. And it seems like everybody wants a piece of that data too. And we’ve become increasingly comfortable with this tradeoff because social media is so widespread. It’s easy to get complacent when everybody around you is doing the same thing. And when so much of our social interaction happens through a screen it’s also easy to let our guard down. From a societal standpoint I think this has fundamentally changed the way we interact with one another.

Think about how communities used to function in the old days. In smaller communities people often knew who the local troublemakers were, who had a reputation for dishonesty, and who could generally be trusted. There was a village blacksmith, a village doctor, and probably a village conman somewhere in the mix. People had reputations and information traveled through the community.

Even when I was growing up in school we interacted with all kinds of personalities face-to-face. You learned how people behaved, how they treated others, and which people you wanted to spend time around.

People have always been capable of deception and smaller communities weren’t necessarily safer or fairer, but repeated face-to-face interactions gave people opportunities to develop a sense of someone’s character.

Social media has complicated all of that. In 2026 people can present themselves however they want online. And sometimes the people with the worst intentions blend in incredibly well with everyone else. You can report an account that scammed you and sometimes nothing happens. You can speak out against somebody who wronged you and they shut you down and block you. You can get one catfish account removed and another one can appear. You can block ten spam numbers and twenty more seem to call you the very next day. It’s all super exhausting.

And the problem isn’t that technology created dishonest people. Dishonest people have always existed. Technology has simply given them new ways to reach people, conceal their behavior, and sometimes escape accountability. And yes there are still plenty of people who meet and interact the old-fashioned way but an enormous amount of modern communication now happens through technology. And this means we need to take the problems that come with it seriously. Modern problems require modern solutions.

Not All Attention Is Good Attention

Before I dive any deeper into my thoughts there’s someone I first need to introduce. Someone who’s played an enormous role in shaping my perspective over the past few years (both as a person and as the founder of PhoneTea). Someone who's been there with me through thick and thin. And someone who gives me strength daily. That someone is my lovely girlfriend and this story wouldn’t be complete without her. We’ve been through a lot together and even before we started dating, when we were just friends, we had already gone through one of the most frightening experiences of our lives (more on that later).

My girlfriend is an extremely wonderful, brilliant, strong, and thoughtful woman (who I love dearly) and I don’t think that I would’ve developed some of the perspectives I have today without her. Because through our relationship, and the experiences we’ve shared, she’s given me a window into a side of life that I hadn’t fully understood before... particularly the things that modern women sometimes have to deal with when interacting with men, both online and in person. And as a man myself, seeing some of those experiences firsthand has challenged my assumptions, broadened my perspective, and helped me grow as a person.

My girlfriend is also my Helen of Troy. She’s strikingly beautiful, so naturally she gets a lot of attention both online and in real life. And the funny thing is she doesn’t even like attention. But whether she wanted it or not she’s gotten a lot more unwanted interactions than I’ve ever had to experience on social media and dating apps, and being with her has taught me something important:

Not all attention is good attention.

And you’ll understand exactly what I mean as this story unfolds.

My girlfriend and I make a great team but we’re almost complete opposites in some ways. Personality-wise, she’s very sweet, shy, and forgiving. She’s the type of person who genuinely tries to see the good in others, even when they haven’t necessarily earned that benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile, I’ve always been much more brazen, outspoken, and skeptical. I question people’s intentions, I don’t forget when someone’s wronged me, and I admit I can hold a grudge for a long time.

But that’s also where we balance each other out. She helps me let go of things I might otherwise hold onto, and she reminds me that not everyone deserves to be viewed with suspicion. And I try to help her recognize when someone’s behavior doesn’t match the person they’re presenting themselves to be. We both help each other notice things the other might’ve missed, whether that’s something about ourselves or with someone we’re interacting with. And despite our differences, there’s one principle we both agree on: If you show respect, you deserve respect in return.

Like a German Shepherd I’m highly protective of my girlfriend. I’ve always seen myself as her protector and I’d go to war for her any day of the week (and in some ways I already have). But being with someone who’s both incredibly beautiful and genuinely kind sometimes really does feel like dating Helen of Troy. Not because she creates problems (she’s genuinely one of the most unproblematic people I know), but because of the attention she attracts and the way some people choose to behave around her. And over time, that attention gave me the opportunity to see interactions that I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to witness on my own.

I’ve had my fair share of encounters with scammers, catfishes, and people pretending to be someone they’re not; but I’ve never had much luck on dating apps myself (and I never received anywhere near the amount of attention she has as a woman just on social media). So a lot of what I’ve learned about those interactions comes from what my girlfriend showed me and then later sharing an online profile with her and, at times, interacting with people through that profile. Suddenly, I wasn’t just hearing about the things women deal with online. I was getting a firsthand look at some of those experiences myself.

And holy shit, did that open my eyes.

We encountered people who were genuinely nice, people who were just looking for conversation, and people who seemed completely normal at first. But we also encountered loads of scammers, trolls, impersonators, and people whose behavior became concerning once we started interacting with them. And one interesting thing that I discovered very early on is that some guys are rude assholes to women for literally no reason at all. And it’s crazy saying this because I’m a guy myself but a lot of these men are walking red flags ladies. Like Usher, y’all got it bad out here.

But jokes aside, what bothered me wasn’t simply that some people were rude, it was just how quickly certain interactions could change. My girlfriend would show me conversations she’d had with men where everything started off completely normal. The conversation would be going fine and then (seemingly out of nowhere) the guy would become rude, pushy, or outright hostile.

Sometimes men would message her first and immediately start acting disrespectfully. Other people were more subtle. They’d seem perfectly reasonable at first but as the conversation continued, little inconsistencies and warning signs would start appearing. And eventually some of them would reveal behavior that made us question whether they could be trusted.

I didn’t realize how frequently women could encounter this kind of behavior until I started seeing it firsthand. But I want to make something clear. This isn’t exclusively a problem with men. Women can be scammers, manipulators, and dishonest people too. And unfortunately, I learned that lesson the hard (expensive) way.

The Woman I Actually Met Who Still Managed to Scam Me

One time I met a woman through social media who lived in a nearby city. We met up once to hang out, and although everything went reasonably well, we didn’t particularly click so I wasn’t expecting anything serious to come from it. But shortly after we went our separate ways she started texting me asking for food. At the time I didn’t think much of it. I ordered her some DoorDash and went about my day. Big mistake.

Over the next several days she started blowing up my phone telling me she’d be coming back to my city soon and that we should meet again. I figured our first meeting hadn’t been terrible so I agreed. Then things started getting weird.

She began contacting me from multiple different phone numbers. She’d tell me she was coming to visit, but suddenly she’d need gas money. Then she’d need food. Then she’d need money for something else. Every few days there was another emergency. She’d gotten locked up. Her car had supposedly been impounded. Her pet had died. And somehow almost every story ended with her asking me for money.

I started getting suspicious. I’d ask questions, point out inconsistencies, and sometimes request proof of what she was telling me. Occasionally she’d video call me, talk for a few minutes, and then disappear until she wanted something else. Whenever I confronted her about the inconsistencies, she’d act offended, disappear for a few days, and eventually come back apologizing.

This went on for about a month. By the time I finally accepted what was happening I’d sent her a few hundred dollars. We had one big final argument and then she blocked me on everything (all of the fake numbers and all of her fake profiles). I reported her pages and the payments I sent her through Cash App but I wasn’t able to recover the money. And here’s what made that experience so frustrating.

I’d actually met this person in real life.

This wasn’t some random account using stolen pictures of a celebrity. I’d seen her with my own two eyes. We spent time together. And that initial meeting had made me more willing to believe what she told me afterward.

Looking back, I realized she used that familiarity to gain my trust before repeatedly asking me for money in her scam. And with all the effort she put in it was one of the most convincing scams I’d personally experienced because it challenged something I thought I understood about trust. Meeting someone in person doesn’t automatically mean they’re honest.

The Snapchat Account I Should Have Questioned

Another time, when I was single, a friend told me he was talking to a woman on Snapchat who was looking for friends. He’d been talking to her for weeks and was convinced she was real. So I asked him to send me her profile. She added me back and we started talking. Almost immediately I noticed inconsistencies.

She was telling me things that didn’t match what she’d told my friend. She gave us different information about where she lived. She avoided sending pictures and seemed to talk in circles whenever I asked certain questions. But because my friend trusted her I ignored some of those warning signs. Eventually she started hitting me with sob stories, and then the sob stories turned into her begging me for money. She begged and begged and eventually I sent her $100. She immediately asked for $50 more and when I refused she blocked me. Not long afterward, she blocked my friend too. The scam was up.

After this happened I was furious with my friend, the girl, and myself; partly because I’d trusted my friend’s judgment and partly because I’d ignored warning signs I could see for myself. But by then the damage was already done.

What These Experiences Taught Me

I consider myself a pretty smart person. I’m naturally inquisitive (but skeptical) and usually pretty good at questioning things that don’t make sense. But as you can see even I’ve been scammed multiple times. And those experiences taught me something important.

Sometimes the people who take advantage of you aren’t strangers who immediately look suspicious. Sometimes they’re people you’ve met. Sometimes they’re people your friends trust. Sometimes they’re people you’ve spent weeks talking to. And sometimes they’re people who seem completely normal until they want something from you.

Through my own experiences and the things my girlfriend showed me, I started developing a much better understanding of the warning signs people encounter online. I also began to understand why so many women feel the need to constantly evaluate the people approaching them, question their intentions, and remain on guard even during seemingly ordinary conversations. I was already a cautious person but experiencing some of these interactions firsthand gave me an entirely different perspective. And the more I saw, the angrier I became.

The Problem With Trusting Social Media Profiles

The problem is that our safety tools haven’t completely caught up. A profile, photos, mutual followers, a phone number, or weeks of conversation can create a feeling of familiarity without actually establishing who someone is.

And social media is interesting because people have almost complete control over the personas that they present to the world. They can make their accounts private, choose which parts of their lives to share, and block anyone they don’t want interacting with them. And from a personal privacy standpoint, those are all good things. But there’s another side to that freedom.

When you’re an outsider looking in, how do you know whether the person you’re interacting with is actually who they claim to be? A convincing profile isn’t necessarily an honest one. And when someone has bad intentions, the same tools that protect ordinary people’s privacy can sometimes make it easier to conceal harmful behavior.

Think about it. Someone can create a convincing profile, spend weeks building trust with another person, and then disappear the moment they’re confronted about dishonest or harmful behavior. They can block the people they’ve mistreated, abandon an account, create a new identity, and potentially repeat the same behavior with someone else.

I’ve seen so many catfish accounts over the years that it’s ridiculous. And some are comically obvious. Like when someone creates a profile using pictures of a world-famous celebrity and claims that’s them, most people are probably going to be suspicious. But what happens when someone steals pictures and info from an ordinary person halfway across the world? Someone you’ve never heard of? Someone whose pictures aren’t immediately recognizable? Now you’re dealing with a completely different problem because you might have no reason to suspect that the person in those pictures isn’t the real person you’re talking to.

And sometimes people don’t even need to create fake identities. A person can use their real name, real pictures, and real social media accounts while presenting a carefully curated version of themselves that hides how they actually behave toward other people in real life. Both situations can create opportunities for deception.

And phone numbers introduce another complication. Disposable numbers and VoIP services are useful for legitimate privacy reasons. I’ve even used them myself. But those same services can also make it easier for someone to abandon one number and begin communicating through another. Someone could use one number to contact multiple people, abandon it after negative interactions, and start over with another. I’ve personally encountered people communicating through multiple numbers, and it made some interactions much harder to keep track of.

Now, despite all of this, a phone number doesn’t automatically establish somebody’s identity either. Numbers can be spoofed, reassigned, or shared. So even when you find information associated with a number you still need to consider whether it actually relates to the person contacting you.

That’s why I don’t believe any single social media profile, phone number, or online search should be treated as definitive proof of somebody’s character. But I also don’t believe people should have to go into every unfamiliar interaction completely blind. There’s an important difference between protecting someone’s privacy and allowing dishonest behavior to go unchallenged.

And I kept coming back to that distinction. Online, someone might manipulate you without ever meeting you. Another person might build trust online and then move the interaction into the real world, where the consequences can become much more serious. Different methods, but both can cause genuine harm. So the way I see it now is if you’re going to encounter dishonest people online, you might as well make them work a little harder to fool you. And one way to do that is by learning from the experiences other people have already had.

And that was one of the ideas that eventually led me toward PhoneTea. Because people have patterns. And sometimes other people have already encountered the warning signs before you.

What I Learned About Online Dating Safety

Before meeting someone you’ve only known digitally, what information do you actually have? Their name? Their phone number? A few pictures? A social media profile? Maybe some mutual followers? And how much of that information have you actually verified?

These questions became increasingly important to me because my girlfriend and I had experienced more than our fair share of questionable interactions. There were scammers, catfishes, trolls, people wasting our time, and situations that made me question how safe it really was to trust strangers online. But one particular experience angered me more than anything else.

Back when we were friends, before we started dating, my girlfriend was robbed and nearly kidnapped by someone she had met through a dating app.

I’m not going to expose her identity or go into every detail of what happened because some parts of that experience deserve to remain private. And it isn’t just my experience to talk about, it’s hers too, since she was the person most directly affected. But what I will say is that this was someone she believed she knew well enough to interact with. And when the situation turned dangerous, that familiarity didn’t protect her.

Before he ran away (like a wimp) he also took her phone. But by the time everything was over the dating profile associated with him had already been deleted. And one of the few remaining pieces of information connected to him was a phone number (but that number was inside of the stolen phone).

I can’t fully describe how angry that experience made me inside. The last few years of my life hadn’t exactly been easy to begin with. I’d been dealing with homelessness, financial problems, personal betrayals, losses, car accidents, and all kinds of other challenges that seemed to come one after another. There were moments when I felt like every time I managed to solve one problem, another one was waiting around the corner. And I won’t lie. I’m still angry about some of those experiences. But I’ve also learned that anger can push you in two very different directions. You can let it consume you, or you can try to channel some of it into building something better.

That experience wasn’t the sole reason I decided to create PhoneTea. It was one of many experiences that had been building up over time. But it was definitely the one that made me the angriest, especially because of how unprepared I felt when it happened.

When my girlfriend nearly got kidnapped we were still just friends but we were both already going through a particularly vulnerable period in our lives. I just remember being mentally exhausted in the weeks leading up to it. My aunt had been hospitalized for months, and she passed away around the same week that everything happened. My family was grieving, life was already throwing more at us than we knew what to do with, and I was struggling to keep myself together.

Normally I’m a very cautious person. I grew up in the trenches of east side Detroit, in environments that taught me early on not to trust people too easily. I’ve always tried to stay aware of my surroundings, pay attention to people’s intentions, and look out for the people I love. But this time, I let my guard down.

I assumed the person my girlfriend was meeting was someone she was already familiar with. I thought the situation was safer than it actually was. And with everything else going on in our lives, I didn’t recognize the danger until things had already started going wrong.

Thankfully, there was one thing that I think made a difference that day. Before it happened my girlfriend had already told me who she was planning to meet that day. I didn’t know every detail about him, but I knew enough about her plans to understand who she was with and where she was supposed to be.

At one point that day I randomly called her phone to check on her. Almost immediately I could tell something wasn’t right because she wasn’t saying much. She sounded like she was trying to stay calm, but when I asked whether she was okay, she wouldn’t answer my question.

And that’s when my instincts kicked in. I didn’t know exactly what was happening but I knew something was wrong. And despite everything I was already dealing with in my own life, none of that mattered to me in that moment. I dropped everything and immediately started heading towards her. Time seemed to slow down, but I made it to where she was and I was able to intervene before things could get any worse. I even managed to chase the guy down, but he ultimately got away with her phone.

I was mentally defeated and furious.

The immediate danger had passed, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how differently everything could’ve ended. I’d spent so much of my life trying to be cautious, trying to recognize trouble before it happened, and trying to protect the people I care about. Yet here I was, dealing with a situation I never imagined we’d find ourselves in.

And what upset me the most wasn’t just how it happened, it was the fact that it even happened at all. It was the overwhelming feeling of losing control. I kept replaying everything in my head, wondering what I could’ve noticed sooner, what I could’ve done differently, and whether there was some warning sign I’d overlooked. I’ve always seen myself as a protector when it comes to the people I care about. And even though I knew the responsibility belonged entirely to the person who caused the harm, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d failed to recognize the danger quickly enough.

I still don’t like thinking about it but I’ve been holding a grudge about what happened ever since. Not because I’m planning some kind of revenge or because I want to spend the rest of my life chasing somebody down. I’ve got better things to do with my life than that. But because I’ll never forget how close someone came to trying to take away somebody I love. That kind of experience stays with you. And looking back, one detail has stayed with me more than almost anything else: my girlfriend told me who she was meeting before it happened.

That simple conversation gave me context when something started going wrong. I can’t say for certain what would’ve happened otherwise, but I’m grateful she told me. And it’s one of the reasons I’m so serious about encouraging people to share their plans with someone they trust before meeting a stranger. Sometimes, something that seems so small can make an enormous difference.

I can’t undo what happened. I can’t change the choices that person made, and I can’t control what they might do in the future. But I can control what I choose to do with everything that experience taught me. And part of what I’ve chosen to do is build something that might help other people recognize warning signs before they find themselves in a similar situation. Because that day taught me something I’ll probably carry with me for the rest of my life.

Don’t assume that the way someone first presents themselves is the whole story.

You can meet someone once or twice and everything goes well. Then you meet them a third time, and suddenly you’re dealing with behavior you never expected. That doesn’t mean everybody is dangerous or that nobody deserves trust. It means trust should develop through consistent behavior, not just a convincing first impression. And when something feels wrong, you should give yourself permission to question it.

After that situation happened I kept thinking about the same questions. What if someone else had encountered this person before us? What if another woman had experienced similar warning signs? What if someone had already tried to warn others? Would that information have changed anything? I don’t know. And I’m not going to pretend that a phone-number lookup could have guaranteed a different outcome. But the possibility that useful warnings might exist somewhere without reaching the people who needed them bothered me tremendously. And it strengthened a belief I’d already started developing. People deserve better tools for making informed decisions about the strangers they interact with.

People Have Patterns, And Other People May Have Seen Them First

Here’s something that kept bothering me for months. People have patterns. And sometimes other people have experienced the red flags before you and survived enough to warn the next person. Someone who’s repeatedly dishonest, manipulative, or aggressive may have behaved that way toward other people before you ever encountered them.

The problem is that those experiences are often scattered. One person knows something because they interacted with someone on a dating app. Another person knows something because they received suspicious messages from a phone number. Someone else may have experienced harassment or repeated unwanted calls. But those people don’t necessarily know each other. And their experiences may never reach the next person who encounters the same number. That made me wonder whether there could be a better way to share useful information.

My original vision for PhoneTea was pretty simple. Take information associated with phone numbers and allow people who’ve interacted with those numbers to share honest, relevant experiences. Then let other people search that information and decide for themselves what it means. In other words, I wanted to build a crowdsourced bullshit detector.

Not a system where anyone can accuse someone of anything without accountability. Not a tool for exposing people’s private identities or encouraging harassment. But a community where people could responsibly describe their firsthand experiences with phone numbers and give others additional context before deciding whether to interact.

I wanted it to help people recognize suspicious calls, scams, harassment, and potentially concerning behavior. But I also wanted it to help with ordinary situations. Maybe you’re a business owner wondering whether an unfamiliar caller is legitimate. Maybe you’re a customer trying to figure out whether a number belongs to a real business. Maybe you’re dating and want to see whether anyone has shared relevant experiences about a number. Or maybe you’re simply curious about a number that keeps contacting you.

I wanted PhoneTea to become more than another caller ID app. I wanted it to become a community for exchanging useful information, organized around phone numbers rather than social media identities. Something like a public forum, but with privacy and responsible reporting built into the experience.

At one point, while researching dating safety, I came across the concept of a “bad date list.” These are lists or communities where people share warnings about potentially dangerous or concerning dating experiences. I was already well into developing PhoneTea when I discovered the term. And when I realized how closely it resembled part of what I’d been building, I literally stopped and thought:

Holy shit, my whole app is a bad date list.

Well, partly. Because the concept I’d been working on was much broader than dating. I wanted to help women recognize potential warning signs before interacting with unfamiliar people. I wanted people who’d already experienced scams, harassment, or other concerning behavior to have a responsible way to share those experiences. And I wanted businesses and ordinary consumers to benefit from greater transparency too.

Of course, information like this needs to be handled carefully. Phone numbers aren’t permanent identities, and negative reviews aren’t automatically proof that someone did something wrong. People deserve opportunities to correct mistakes, challenge inaccurate information, and protect their privacy. Those considerations were important to me from the beginning because I didn’t want to create a platform built around slander, retaliation, or public humiliation.

I wanted something genuinely useful. Because sometimes the information that helps you make a better decision doesn’t come from a company or an automated database. Sometimes it comes from another ordinary person who’s already been through something similar. And sometimes that person just wants to make sure nobody else has to experience what they did. That became another one of the central ideas behind PhoneTea.

I Didn’t Validate PhoneTea Through Market Research. I Validated It Through Pain.

When I started building PhoneTea I didn’t validate the app the normal way a founder would. No, there was no market research done, I validated the app through pain.

And I mean that literally.

By the time I started seriously developing the idea, my girlfriend and I had already accumulated an enormous amount of firsthand experience interacting with strangers online. From 2024-2026 we were sharing two different VoIP numbers from an account that sometimes received hundreds of calls and text messages in a day. And trying to sort through all of those different communications was exhausting. Some people were genuine. Some were wasting our time. Some were suspicious. And others were openly disrespectful or aggressive. I started thinking about how useful it would be to have a tool that could help us organize and evaluate information associated with the numbers contacting us.

The VoIP Account That Disappeared

To dive a little deeper into the VoIP story, when I first started developing the app my girlfriend and I were already using a VoIP number app from a very popular tech company. I’m not going to name that company right now (because I’m still holding a grudge with that company) but our account with them had accumulated thousands of calls and text messages documenting our interactions with different people over time.

Some of those conversations were ordinary. Others contained the strangest kinds of red flags, suspicious behavior, and negative experiences that had inspired me to build PhoneTea in the first place. I had hoped to review those records and determine which firsthand experiences could responsibly contribute to the app’s early community information.

Then one day (earlier this year), I woke up and discovered that our account had been canceled for allegedly “violating” the company’s terms of service. I was surprised because, as far as I knew, we hadn’t done anything that actually warranted losing the account. We hadn’t even used the account in months. I appealed the decision but I was never able to regain access anymore. And I was pissed. Not simply because we’d lost access to a phone number, but because we’d lost access to a huge collection of communications that had accumulated over time. This made me think about how easily information can disappear when everything depends on one account, one platform, or one company’s decisions.

And of course preserving and sharing information about phone numbers comes with serious responsibilities too. People’s privacy matters, allegations need context, and not every negative interaction belongs in a public database. But I still believed there should be a responsible way for people to share useful firsthand experiences. And I was determined to keep working on it so I doubled down on my original mission.

Why I Chose Phone Numbers

Originally, I considered using multiple forms of social media identification to help people recognize suspicious accounts and interactions. But the more I thought about it, the more I kept coming back to phone numbers.

Why? Because almost everyone has one.

Not everybody uses Facebook. Not everybody has Instagram. Some people avoid social media entirely. Hell, I barely use some of those platforms myself. But phone numbers remain one of the most common ways people communicate with strangers, businesses, and one another.

Whether someone is using a traditional mobile number or a VoIP service, that number can become a starting point for looking up available information and community-reported experiences. It isn’t a perfect identifier. But I believed it was a good place to start. And that’s where the foundation of PhoneTea came from.

I keep a lot of notes in my phone, partly to organize my thoughts and partly to remind myself of ideas I want to pursue. After going back through those notes recently, I was able to find the exact date when I first recorded the idea for PhoneTea:

July 14, 2025.

By August 1, 2025, I officially started working on it. And even though life was already throwing plenty of challenges at us, I decided to jump right in.

What’s funny about this is that I wasn’t even working on just one app at the time. I was actually building two different applications simultaneously: PhoneTea and a secret companion app that I intended to work alongside it. I’m not ready to reveal much about that second project just yet, but the two ideas were connected from the very beginning.

Eventually, I decided to pause development on the companion app and put all my attention into finishing PhoneTea. It wasn’t because I’d lost interest in the other project. It was because PhoneTea felt more urgent, especially considering everything my girlfriend and I had already experienced. I wanted to get it into people’s hands as soon as I responsibly could. And I knew that splitting my attention between two separate apps was only going to slow me down.

Building an App Without a Traditional Development Team

This wasn’t my first attempt at building a business or an app. Back in spring of 2020, at the beginning of COVID, I tried developing a real estate app in my free time (think something like Zillow but for rental management). I worked at it for a year straight and I threw time, money, and energy at it before I realized it just wasn’t sustainable for me. Ultimately that project didn’t work out but it taught me a lot about how expensive software development could become when you had to outsource the work.

At the time I wasn’t a software developer and if I wanted something built I generally had to hire someone to build it. Every new feature, revision, or change could mean more money. The developers who I was working with were great but I ran out of money before I could ever finish the project.

By 2025, things were a lot different. AI development tools like Claude Code had become capable enough that I could begin experimenting with ideas that would’ve been much harder for me to pursue just a few years earlier. And experiment I did.

I’d already been using AI for all kinds of side projects so I was comfortable working with it. And this time, instead of immediately hiring a development team, I decided to start creating the app myself with AI assistance from Claude AI and other AI tools. I still had to pay for subscriptions, services, and development tools but compared with the cost of outsourcing my earlier project, the barrier to getting started was dramatically lower. And as a perfectionist who’s extremely particular about details, I loved having the ability to make changes without paying another developer every time I wanted something revised.

Turning an Idea Into a Working App

Once I started taking PhoneTea seriously, I knew I wanted it to work across three platforms. Web. Android. iOS. And I wanted it to adapt to different screen sizes without requiring me to maintain three completely separate applications. So with that in mind I started building.

I worked on the app whenever I had free time, adding features little by little every single day. Eventually, I had something resembling a working minimum viable product. But I knew there was still a lot more work to do. Each platform had different requirements. And as the app grew, I started discovering more things I wanted to improve.

Around this same time I noticed a large amount of people online were discussing problems similar to the ones my girlfriend and I had experienced. That reinforced my belief that PhoneTea shouldn’t be a tool just for us. It should be fully community-driven.

I also saw another app built around a somewhat similar concept gain widespread attention while PhoneTea was still in development. I won’t name it here but watching the attention surrounding that project, along with concerns about how platforms like it could handle privacy and accusations, made me think even more seriously about the responsibilities involved. That app failed spectacularly but I learned from it.

I didn’t want PhoneTea to become a hub for lies, retaliation, or harassment. I wanted people to be able to share experiences while also giving others a meaningful opportunity to respond, correct inaccuracies, and defend themselves.

At the same time, I was dealing with serious financial and housing instability. So the project had to be sustainable. I needed a way to cover the ongoing costs of features, infrastructure, and third-party services without making the entire app inaccessible to people who couldn’t afford to pay. That’s one reason I decided to offer free core functionality alongside premium subscriptions. I wanted to build something useful. But I also needed to be realistic about what it would cost to keep it running. And through all of that, I kept working. Because I’d already experienced the problem firsthand. I didn’t need someone to convince me that the frustration was actually real. I’d literally lived it.

Why I Built PhoneTea

The original idea behind PhoneTea was much bigger than spam calls. In fact, spam protection was never the entire point. I wanted to build something that would help people make better informed decisions about unfamiliar phone numbers and the interactions associated with them. Something that could help women evaluate unfamiliar contacts before meeting someone. Something that could help people who’d already experienced harassment, scams, or other concerning behavior share their experiences. Something that could help older adults recognize potentially suspicious calls. And something that could eventually provide useful information for both consumers and businesses.

I sometimes describe PhoneTea as something like Nextdoor, except organized around phone numbers rather than neighborhoods. The idea is that a phone number can have its own community information page where people can look up available details, read reviews, and contribute relevant experiences. Instead of relying entirely on automated spam labels, I wanted people to have a voice too.

What PhoneTea Actually Does

At its core, PhoneTea combines phone number information with community generated reviews. Users can look up numbers, explore available information, and contribute reviews about relevant firsthand experiences. The app also includes phone number validation features that can provide technical information about a number, such as whether it’s categorized as mobile, landline, toll-free, or VoIP, depending on the available data. I’m helping pay for those validation services myself because I want useful information to be accessible to people using the app. PhoneTea also includes caller ID functionality and communication features designed to give users more ways to interact and exchange information.

One of my priorities was allowing people to respond to reviews associated with numbers they control. I didn’t want the platform to become a one-sided accusation board. I wanted there to be room for context, discussion, disagreement, and corrections. And while the platform offers premium subscriptions to help cover operating costs, I’ve worked hard to keep all of the core features available for free (subject to usage limits).

The basic premise of the app is transparency, balanced with privacy and responsible community participation.

The Features That Nearly Drove Me Insane

When I started learning how software development worked I discovered that I absolutely loved working on the backend. Frontend development was interesting too (and there’s definitely something satisfying about designing an interface and watching it come to life) but once I started understanding what was possible behind the scenes I was hooked. And I know that’s ironic because most users never see the backend but it’s some of the most important work involved in building an app.

While I was building the app I spent countless hours researching development best practices, learning about databases, authentication, security, pagination, and optimizing how the app reads and writes data. Some of the features that were hardest for me to build (but I’m also the most proud of) are the encrypted messaging system, the AI-powered summary and mapping interface, and the SMS verification functionality. And not necessarily because they’re the most visible features, but because of how much thinking, debugging, and problem-solving went into building them.

I’m not a traditionally trained software engineer, so a lot of the time, I was learning while building. I knew exactly what I wanted PhoneTea to do, but figuring out how to make those ideas work reliably was a completely different challenge. AI tools helped me tremendously throughout that process. But I still had to learn how to communicate my ideas clearly, evaluate the results, identify problems, and keep refining the implementation. And because I was cautious about giving automated tools unrestricted access to my development environment, I initially handled the integration of files and code changes myself. Every new feature, bug fix, and adjustment required attention and I applied each new code change by hand myself. Over time I became more comfortable with AI-assisted development workflows in my terminal, but in the beginning I wanted to understand exactly what was being added to my project.

The Last 10% Almost Broke Me

I reached a functional version of PhoneTea within roughly three months. And at first, I thought I was almost finished. But yeah… About that… It turned out that getting an app working and getting an app ready for public release are two very different things. There were security considerations, platform requirements, billing systems, authentication issues, performance improvements, and countless little problems that didn’t become obvious until I started testing everything more seriously.

I worked on PhoneTea religiously but I’m only one person. Every day, I was researching something, fixing something, testing something, or thinking about another way to improve the experience. Sometimes I’d solve one problem and immediately discover three more. There were moments when I genuinely felt like I was losing my mind trying to get everything right. And all of this was happening while I was still dealing with the responsibilities and challenges of everyday life.

The last few years haven’t been particularly kind to me. I’ve dealt with homelessness, financial pressure, personal losses, and setbacks that made it difficult to focus on anything other than getting through the next day. There were times when I was mentally exhausted before I even opened my laptop. But I kept going. I’ve always loved building things, and I wasn’t ready to give up on something that had become so important to me. I kept telling myself that every problem I solved was one less problem standing between PhoneTea and the people I wanted it to help. And slowly, things started coming together.

Finally Releasing PhoneTea

After spending more than a year working on the project, I finally reached the point where I could start releasing PhoneTea to the public.

And I can’t even fully describe how that felt. It was like finally making it to the top of a mountain after spending so long climbing that you’d almost forgotten what the summit looked like. I was proud. Exhausted. Relieved. And probably still thinking about another ten features I wanted to add. Because even after all that work, I still don’t consider PhoneTea finished.

What exists today is the beginning of a much larger idea. I want PhoneTea to become a useful, responsible community where people can share experiences, discover relevant information, and make more informed decisions about the phone numbers they encounter. I want to keep improving its privacy protections, its safety features, and the tools that help people communicate responsibly. And I want to keep listening to the people who actually use it.

There’s still plenty of work ahead of me. But after everything it took to get here, I’m proud that PhoneTea is finally something people can use. Because to me, this has always been bigger than phone numbers. It’s about information. It’s about accountability. And it’s about giving people another opportunity to recognize warning signs before a bad interaction becomes something worse.

How to Protect Yourself When Meeting People Online

I don’t believe any app can completely eliminate the risks of interacting with strangers. And I’m definitely not going to claim that PhoneTea can guarantee anyone’s safety. But I do believe that having more useful information can help people make better decisions.

Don’t Confuse Familiarity With Trust

Talking to someone for weeks doesn’t necessarily mean you know who they are. And meeting someone once doesn’t automatically make them trustworthy either. I learned that firsthand. Take your time, pay attention to inconsistencies, and don’t let someone pressure you into moving faster than you’re comfortable with. Trust should be earned through consistent behavior.

Meet Somewhere Public

For an initial meeting, choose a public place where other people are present. Avoid isolated locations, and don’t feel obligated to change your plans because someone insists. A person who’s genuinely interested in meeting you should be willing to respect reasonable safety precautions.

Let Someone You Trust Know Where You’re Going

Always share your plans with someone you trust. Let them know who you’re meeting, where you’re going, when you expect to return, and how they can check on you. If possible, share the person’s name, phone number, or profile information too, so someone else has a record of who you were planning to meet.

Remember what I told you earlier about my girlfriend? We were just friends at that time, but before everything happened she had already told me who she was planning to meet. And when I called her and realized something was wrong, that information gave me context I might not otherwise have had.

I can’t say for certain what would’ve happened if she hadn’t told me beforehand. But I genuinely believe that simple conversation helped me recognize the danger and respond quickly. This is one of those precautions that might feel unnecessary right up until the moment it matters most.

And here’s another precaution I think people overlook: have a plan for what happens if your phone gets stolen, lost, or taken away from you. You’d be surprised how many people are willing to rob someone over a phone. And when you’re meeting a stranger the last thing you want is for your only means of communication, along with the information about who you were meeting, to disappear with it.

Consider bringing a charged backup phone with an active calling plan, especially if you’re meeting someone for the first time. You should also leave a copy of the person’s contact information, profile details, and your meeting plans with someone you trust. That way, even if your phone is taken, there’s still a record of who you were meeting and where you intended to be.

If you’re bringing your primary phone, make sure its security and location features are properly configured beforehand. On an iPhone that includes Apple’s “Find My” and the Emergency SOS features. On an Android, Google’s “Find Hub” (formerly Find My Device) and the phone’s available Emergency SOS and location sharing features can serve similar purposes.

And don’t just assume those features are working either. Check them before you leave, make sure your phone is charged, and consider sharing your live location with someone you trust. Because if something goes wrong, you don’t want the only record of where you went and who you were meeting to be sitting in somebody else’s pocket.

Maintain Control of Your Transportation

Whenever possible, have your own way to arrive and leave. This applies to everyone but especially if you’re a woman. Being able to end an uncomfortable situation without depending on the other person is important. And don’t ever let someone pressure you into going somewhere you hadn’t agreed to visit.

Protect Your Personal Information

Your home address, workplace, financial information, family details, and other sensitive information don’t need to be shared simply because someone asks. You can get to know somebody without immediately giving them access to every part of your life. And if someone gets angry because you’re protecting your privacy, that’s worth paying attention to.

Use Available Information, but Understand Its Limitations

Looking up an unfamiliar phone number may reveal useful information, including community reported experiences. But an absence of negative reviews doesn’t establish that someone is safe. And an accusation in a review doesn’t automatically establish that it’s true. Use available information as one part of your decision making process. Not as a substitute for judgment.

Don’t Ignore Your Own Discomfort

If someone is making you feel nervous, pressured, or unsafe, you don’t owe them another opportunity to cross your boundaries. You can end the conversation. You can decline the meeting. You can block them. And you don’t need to prove that someone is dangerous before deciding that you don’t want to interact with them.

I used to think being cautious meant trying to anticipate every possible danger. But I’ve learned that sometimes the most important thing you can do is recognize when an interaction isn’t worth continuing.

Your time, your privacy, and your personal safety are worth more than a stranger’s approval.

I’ve learned that lesson through experiences I wish we’d never had to go through. And if sharing those lessons helps even one person make a safer decision, then writing this article was worth it.

When I was interacting with people on dating apps alongside my girlfriend, the experience was completely different from my own experiences. But one thing that happened was that the more people we talked to, the more I started developing what I like to call a bullshit detector. It’s not perfect, obviously. I’ve already told you about some of the times mine failed spectacularly. But after interacting with so many different people, certain patterns started becoming easier to recognize. And there are a few more things I learned that I think are worth sharing.

Watch Out for Fast Talkers

One of the biggest red flags I’ve learned to recognize is something I call a fast talker. And no, I’m not talking about somebody who literally speaks quickly. I’m talking about people who try to rush an interaction before you’ve had time to even get comfortable.

You might have just started talking to someone, and suddenly they’re asking for personal information, pushing for a meetup, or trying to get you to do something you weren’t planning on doing. They might ask for your Instagram, Cash App, workplace information, family information, or other personal details before you’ve even established a basic level of trust. Sometimes they’ll throw so much information at you that it’s difficult to keep track of what they’re saying. And one of the biggest warning signs?

They get hostile when you tell them no.

That right there is a reason to reconsider the interaction. Someone who respects your boundaries shouldn’t need to intimidate you into changing them.

Be Skeptical When Someone You’ve Just Met Starts Asking for Money

Remember the woman I told you about earlier? The one who kept asking me for food, gas money, and help with one emergency after another? That’s exactly the kind of situation I wish I’d recognized sooner.

If someone you’ve only recently met starts asking for money, slow down. If they ask for too many favors, slow down. You don’t necessarily know their circumstances, and not every request for help is dishonest. But repeated financial emergencies, changing stories, pressure, and requests for additional payments are serious warning signs. And if someone keeps asking you to send more money after you’ve already paid them, don’t assume another payment will solve the problem. That’s often how financial manipulation continues.

Be Careful With Unexpected Financial Messages

If an unfamiliar number contacts you asking about your Chase account, Wells Fargo account, Bank of America account, or any other financial institution, don’t provide sensitive information through that conversation. Even if the message looks official. Contact the institution through its official app, website, or a phone number you independently know is legitimate.

And be especially careful when someone promises to split money with you, send you a payment later, “look out for you”, or reward you for moving money on their behalf. If the arrangement doesn’t make sense, don’t let the promise of easy money override your judgment.

Ask Questions When Stories Don’t Add Up

One thing I’ve learned from my experiences is that inconsistencies matter. If someone contacts you claiming something happened that you know nothing about, don’t immediately accept their version of events. Ask reasonable questions. Look for independent confirmation.

And don’t send money, personal information, or account credentials simply because someone has created a sense of urgency. You don’t need to win an argument with a suspected scammer, either. Sometimes the smartest decision is to stop responding. And remember, you don’t owe strangers your time, your personal information, or another chance to cross your boundaries. If something doesn’t feel right, you’re allowed to walk away.

Your Experience Could Help Someone Else

When I look back at everything that led me to build PhoneTea, I don’t see one isolated event. I see years of frustration. I see countless interactions that made me question how much we really know about the strangers we communicate with. I see the experiences my girlfriend and I went through, including situations that were frustrating, dishonest, and sometimes genuinely frightening. And I see one particularly dangerous experience that left me furious about how unprepared I felt. But I also see an opportunity to build something useful out of those experiences. That’s what PhoneTea represents to me.

I don’t expect one app to solve every problem associated with online dating, scams, harassment, or personal safety. We’ll never completely eliminate scammers. We’ll never stop every dishonest person from lying. We’ll never prevent every dangerous interaction. And we’ll never be able to guarantee that the people we meet online are exactly who they claim to be. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to make things better. I believe people deserve access to useful information. I believe firsthand experiences can help others recognize potential warning signs. And I believe there should be responsible ways for people to share those experiences without compromising the privacy or rights of others.

If you’ve experienced harassment, suspicious calls, scams, or other concerning interactions, I hope PhoneTea can provide a place to share relevant information responsibly. And if you’re someone who’s simply trying to learn more about an unfamiliar number before deciding whether to respond, I hope the platform can help you make a more informed decision.

If you decide to try PhoneTea, I’d genuinely love to hear about your experience. I especially want to hear from people who’ve dealt with scams, harassment, dangerous encounters, or situations where they wish they’d known more about someone before trusting them. And if PhoneTea ever helps you recognize a warning sign, avoid a bad situation, or make a safer decision, I want to hear that story too. Hearing from women who’ve experienced these situations is particularly important to me because of what I’ve witnessed firsthand. But this platform was built for anyone who believes better information can help people protect themselves. That’s the kind of community I want PhoneTea to become.

Eventually, I’d also love to feature real stories from people who’ve used PhoneTea and found it helpful. Not because I want to exploit anyone’s experiences, but because I believe those stories could help someone else recognize a warning sign before it’s too late. Of course, I would only share someone’s story publicly with their permission, and I’d respect anyone who wanted to remain anonymous. For now, even hearing your feedback would mean a lot to me.

I’m still building. I’m still learning. And I have a lot more planned for PhoneTea. But after everything that brought me here, I’m proud that I finally have something I can share with the world. I’ve faced challenges that made me question whether I’d ever get to this point. I’ve had days when I was exhausted, frustrated, angry, and overwhelmed. But I kept going. And while I can’t change everything that’s happened in the past, I can try to create something useful for the future.

Because sometimes the warning you wish you’d received is the warning you can give someone else.

And if sharing my story helps even one person recognize a warning sign, avoid a dangerous situation, or feel a little more prepared, then everything it took to write this was worth it.

Explore PhoneTea

PhoneTea is available now.

Website: phonetea.com

Android: Get PhoneTea on Google Play

This is only the beginning.

Stay tuned. I’ve got a lot more in store.