Gauth

Is Gauth safe?

Gauth is safe from strangers: there is no feed, no friend list and no way for students to message each other. The risk sits in what it collects. Students photograph their homework, upload files and speak to its AI tutor, and Gauth's policies let it keep that material and use it to train its models. Gauth belongs to the ByteDance group, the owner of TikTok, and we score it 57/100, level with ByteDance's photo editor Hypic and a few points behind the flashcard app Quizlet (62).

Who runs Gauth and where the data goes

Outside the US, Gauth is provided by Gauthtech Pte. Ltd., registered in Singapore. Its global privacy policy, updated on 30 March 2026, says data may be stored on servers in Malaysia and Singapore, and that entities in its "corporate group" may get limited remote access to it for storage, security, research and development, analytics and content moderation. The policy does not say which countries those group companies are in.

US users have a separate policy, dated 22 January 2026, which names TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC as the operator and says some information is shared with TT Commerce & Global Services LLC "to facilitate a global and interoperable experience". Gauth was one of ten apps Apple pulled from the US App Store alongside TikTok on 19 January 2025 under the law requiring ByteDance to sell its US apps. It has since returned.

What Gauth collects from students

Apple's privacy label is short. It lists identifiers as used to track you across other companies' apps, and links contact details, photos, user and device IDs, usage data and diagnostics to you. Google Play adds that Gauth may share user content with other companies for app functions, and uses device IDs for advertising or marketing.

The policies describe more:

• Homework itself. Gauth collects written prompts, uploaded files and voice recordings from its speech-to-text feature. Apple's label adds photos, which is how most questions arrive.
• AI training. Both policies list training and improving "machine learning models and algorithms" as a use of the data, with no opt-out.
• Advertising. The global policy collects advertising identifiers, receives data from ad partners about your activity on other apps and sites, and allows "targeted ads, where permitted". It offers a consent switch under "ad network preferences" in the app's settings. The US policy says Gauth does not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioural advertising where the law restricts it.
• Public answers. Both policies warn that some user content can be visible to other users and to search engines.

For an app used mostly by teenagers, that is a lot of personal material leaving the phone. When the labels and the policy disagree this much, we score the policy.

The Google Analytics lawsuit

On 31 August 2026 a US user filed a proposed class action against TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC in the federal court for the Central District of California. The complaint alleges that Google Analytics code inside Gauth sent each question a user typed, together with a persistent identifier and engagement data, to Google without consent, breaching the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the California Invasion of Privacy Act. These are allegations, and the company has not been found liable. Lawsuits do not lower our regulatory score, but the case shows why a homework app's analytics matter: a question can reveal what a student struggles with.

Age ratings that do not match the rules

Gauth's own policies say the app "is not directed at, and may not be used by, children under the age of 13", with higher limits in some places (14 in Quebec and South Korea). The stores tell parents something else: 4+ on the App Store and "All ages" under Google Play's German USK rating. The policies describe no age check at sign-up. Parents relying on store ratings or Screen Time limits for younger children will not be warned off.

Content risk is otherwise low. Answers come from Gauth's AI and from a network of paid subject experts rather than other students, and the US policy says Gauth scans user content to enforce its honour code. The bigger worry for schools is that ready-made, step-by-step answers make it easy to copy homework.

How to use Gauth more safely

1. Keep children under 13 off Gauth, whatever the store rating says.
2. Crop homework photos so they show only the question, not names, school details or the rest of the page.
3. Do not use the voice tutor for anything personal; the policy keeps voice recordings as user content.
4. On iPhone, deny the tracking request; outside the US, set "ad network preferences" to "Do Not Consent".
5. To delete data, email the privacy address in the policy for your region ([email protected] in the US) from the account's email address.

How we scored it

Regulatory record (86) is Gauth's strongest factor: no regulator has fined or ordered it. Privacy (45) is the weakest, because the policies allow AI training on homework photos and voice, group-wide access and targeted ads that the App Store label does not show. Scams and harmful content (70) loses points for the gap between the store ratings and the minimum age of 13, and security (55) for a clean record backed by little public detail and no bug bounty covering the app.