Chegg

Is Chegg safe?

Chegg Study does what it promises, step-by-step textbook solutions and answers from subject experts, and there is little risk from other users. The risk is the company's record. Four data breaches, the largest exposing 39.7 million accounts in 2018, led the FTC to put Chegg under a data-security order in January 2023. In September 2025 Chegg agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle FTC charges that it made subscriptions hard to cancel. Its privacy policy also sells or shares data for targeted advertising. We score it 47/100, well below Quizlet (62) and Gauth (57).

Chegg's data breaches and the FTC order

The FTC's case covered four breaches that together exposed personal data of about 40 million users and employees. The data included Social Security numbers, email addresses and passwords. For users who had applied through Chegg's scholarship search, it included dates of birth, sexual orientation and disabilities. For staff, it included financial and medical information.

The biggest was the April 2018 breach, which Have I Been Pwned lists at 39,721,127 accounts. Names, email addresses, usernames and passwords leaked, the passwords stored as unsalted MD5 hashes that are quick to crack. Mathway, a maths app also sold by Chegg, Inc. on the App Store, lost 25.7 million records in a separate January 2020 breach.

The FTC finalised its order on 27 January 2023. Chegg must run a comprehensive information security program, limit what personal data it collects and keeps, offer users multifactor authentication and let them ask to see and delete their data. The order carried no fine. We could not confirm from Chegg's help pages which second login factors it offers today.

Chegg's security reporting runs through a vulnerability disclosure policy on HackerOne that covers Chegg, Mathway, Busuu and Thinkful. It pays no rewards.

Cancellation and the $7.5 million settlement

On 15 September 2025 the FTC announced that Chegg would pay $7.5 million to settle allegations under the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act and the FTC Act. The FTC said Chegg buried its online cancellation links, made the process confusing and charged nearly 200,000 people after they had asked to cancel, starting in October 2020. The money goes to refunds, and the proposed order requires a cancellation method as easy as the one used to sign up. The stipulated order was filed in federal court in Northern California on 19 September 2025; the FTC case page still listed the case as pending, and we could not confirm that the judge has entered it.

What Chegg collects and shares

Apple's label links nine types of data to you: purchases, location, contact details, user content, search history, identifiers, usage data, diagnostics and other data. Google Play says device IDs, app interactions and even the list of installed apps are shared with other companies.

The privacy policy, last updated on 9 September 2026, is plain about advertising. Chegg sells or shares contact, device, location, demographic, internet activity and interest data with ad networks, marketing providers and business partners for targeted ads. It honours the Global Privacy Control signal and has a "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" link, but the opt-out works per browser and device.

AI is the newer issue. Some features send your voice and text to outside providers, which the policy names as Azure AI Speech Services, OpenAI and Anthropic. Chegg and its partners may use what adults type or say to train its models, with an opt-out only in some places. The policy says it does not train on content from users it knows to be under 18.

A shrinking company holding student data

Chegg has shrunk fast as students turned to general AI chatbots. On 27 October 2025 it announced a plan to cut about 388 jobs, about 45% of its staff, and its chief executive stepped down. Revenue for the second quarter of 2026 was $51.8 million, against $105.1 million a year earlier, and on 24 July 2026 the NYSE warned that its share price had averaged under $1. Chegg repaid its last convertible notes in September 2026 and says it has no debt. A sale or wind-down would move millions of student accounts. The policy allows personal data to be transferred in a merger or sale of assets.

Students and academic integrity

Chegg is aimed at high school and college students. Its policy says the services are not meant for children under 13, although the App Store rates the app 4+. The bigger risk for students is academic. Universities have investigated students for posting live exam questions to Chegg's experts and copying the answers. Use solutions to check your own working, not to hand in.

How to use Chegg more safely

1. Use a password you have never used anywhere else; if you had an account before 2018, change any reused password.
2. Turn on any second login step Chegg offers in account settings.
3. Turn on Global Privacy Control in your browser, or use the "Do Not Sell or Share" link on each device.
4. Cancel through the store if you subscribed in the app, and keep the confirmation email.
5. Ask for deletion through Chegg's privacy request form or [email protected] when you stop using it.

How we scored it

Security (40) and privacy (38) are Chegg's weakest factors: four breaches with sensitive data, and a policy that sells or shares data for ads. Regulatory record (50) reflects two FTC actions, a data-security order and a $7.5 million cancellation settlement. Scams and harmful content (72) is the strongest factor, because answers come from experts and AI rather than from strangers.