GoodBye TryHackMe

This post was not originally meant to be a farewell but rather a platform review of TryHackMe (THM). However, in light of the most recent controversy, I no longer hold an account on that platform and will not encourage users to leverage it.

Prior Experience:

The choice to move away from them was not one of brief reflection, as their platform had been part of my stepping stones when I first started to study offensive security. The boxes and concepts were not intimidating and provided just enough guidance to ensure I did not feel discouraged when I hit roadblocks. Now, following OSCP in 2024, I really did not use the platform anymore as my preference had changed and I looked for more challenging platforms. While this shift may not have been as shocking, a lot of users moving forward tend to move to alternative platforms rather than remain with THM, as the focus seemed geared toward early career professionals.

The Writing on the Wall:

The moment I heard THM had stepped into the certification game, I raised my eyebrow in shock, as the platform was CTF-based, not learning- or academy-based, similar to one of its competitors, HackTheBox. Now, if this was simply a new offering and was not really meant to compete, I do not think anyone would give much thought — but with no real credibility as a certification, it had started to compare itself to others, which is even present to this day:

Along with this, they made the bold claim that this certification is industry recognized, which it is not.

Even at this point, I was confused, but not to the degree that I felt the need to delete my account and stop vouching for them.

The Final Nail:

As I had not kept too much up to date with them for a while, I heard they had found themselves in some hot water. Upon looking into this myself, I found a great video that helped summarize the situation, as I did not have the time to delve too deep into what was going on.

To put it simply, they have created a new AI pentesting company that appears to have been trained on THM users' data. They are essentially looking to replace the very people they are training.

Good Bye:

With all of this in mind, I have formally deleted my account. I hope that in the future they will change their ways, but for now I have to say farewell.