Hackers leak data from Andrew Tate's 'university' of 'money making'

“The Real World” - Andrew Tate’s presumably vomitous $50-a-month “learning platform” which promises to teach you how to master the skill of “money making” - has been hacked. Yes, the institution formerly known as “Hustler’s University” has been exposed.

Well, OK, Tate says it hasn’t. But nonetheless data on around 800k usernames, 300k email addresses and a ton of messages that were extracted from their various servers was acquired by a group of anti-Tate hacktivists who shared it with various media publications, and indeed the internet at large via Distributed Denial of Secrets.

The hackers later went on to disrupt one of Tate’s streaming shows via “flooding it with emojis and symbols associated with feminist and LGBTQ+ communities”.

I can’t imagine many things less wholesome than reading the chat logs of Andrew Tate’s subscription-only online course, but there we go, they’re now available to all.

The logs are taken from the platform’s 221 public and 395 private chat servers, which are spread across a dozen “campuses.” According to the site’s metrics, it generates approximately $5,650,000 monthly. The data also includes 324,382 unique email addresses that appear to belong to users who were removed from the main database after they stopped paying their subscriptions.

They later also managed to get their hands on chats from staff servers, where it appears those in power were mostly complaining about grifters and engagement farmers. Who’d have thought those sort of characters would turn up in the Tate-o-sphere?

The chat logs include details about the inner workings of the organization; Tate’s conversations with site moderators; user concerns about widespread site abuse; members farming engagement; and lack of action on content moderation.

The email addresses have been added to have i been pwned so if you’re one of the unlucky ex-subscribers then you can find out if your personal details were leaked at the email level at least.

This isn’t the first evidence of a hack on his place of “learning”. In July, Cybernews reported finding a ton of publicly exposed data including nearly a million user accounts, email addresses and millions of messages. I’m not sure chancing upon a appallingly configured database is exactly hacking to be fair, but it has the same net effect. Despite Tate’s vehement and yet entirely untrue denials, time to re-add The Real World to the list of dubious institutions failing to take any care of the basic privacy and security of its users, as unsympathetic crowd as they may be to some.

As a reminder, Andrew Tate is a self-proclaimed misogynist who is currently on trial for several crimes including “rape, human trafficking and forming an organised crime group to sexually exploit women.”

His “university” is also the only one I’ve seen where the first FAQ is “Is this program suitable for women?”. Despite the answer - which a cynic might claim has strong vibes of “YeS of Course! soMeOf my best friEnds aRe Women!?” - I can’t imagine it’s actually suitable for anyone.