Andrew Tate, the polarizing internet personality and self-proclaimed life coach, has built a loyal following through his online platform The Real World. Formerly known as Hustler’s University, the subscription-based service promises entrepreneurial wisdom and a path to wealth and is primarily aimed at young men seeking financial independence. But recently, the platform suffered a serious cyberattack that exposed sensitive data of nearly 800,000 users.

Who hacked Andrew Tate’s online university?

The breach was committed by a group of anonymous hacktivists who use cyberattacks as a means of protest, the Daily Dot reports. These hackers claimed ideological motives and positioned themselves against what they saw as harmful narratives perpetuated by Tate and his platform.

They described their actions as a form of digital activism and claimed that “The Real World” promoted toxic masculinity and exploitative ideologies. In addition to their criticism of the platform’s content, they were particularly harsh about its technical vulnerabilities, which they derided as “incredibly insecure.”

Their mission, they explained, was twofold: to disrupt Tate’s operations and to expose inadequate security measures to protect users’ private information. By targeting a prominent figure like Tate, the hacktivists wanted to make a statement that would resonate beyond his immediate audience.

How hacktivists put pressure on Andrew Tate

According to the hackers, The Real World failed to implement basic security protocols. The breach reportedly exploited a misconfigured database, a common but preventable error that allowed unauthorized access to large amounts of user data.

In addition to the database vulnerabilities, the hackers infiltrated both public and private chat servers that stored conversations and content shared by users. The violation culminated in a public show of defiance during a live broadcast of Tate’s Emergency Meeting episode on the video platform Rumble. Hackers hijacked the chatroom and flooded it with emojis and symbols associated with feminist and LGBTQ+ communities.

The compromised data included nearly 800,000 usernames, over 300,000 email addresses and messages exchanged across hundreds of servers. The entire data was released by the nonprofit transparency organization Distributed Denial of Secrets, which explains on its website that “the logs come from the platform’s 221 public and 395 private chat servers spread across a dozen “campuses.” According to the site’s metrics, it generates approximately $5,650,000 per month. 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 for their subscriptions .

Find out if you were affected by the data breach

The data from the breach of Andrew Tate’s “The Real World” was added to Have I Been Pwned, a widely used service that allows individuals to check whether their credentials have been exposed in data breaches. Users can visit and enter their email addresses to see if their information was part of this incident.

If your email address appears in the database, it is important to take immediate action:

• Change your passwords for all affected accounts.

• Make sure your new passwords are strong and unique.

• Enable multi-factor authentication if possible.

• Be alert for phishing emails or other suspicious activity targeting your accounts.

Andrew Tate’s The Real World was contacted for comment but has not yet responded.