Last Updated on July 22, 2022 by David Shaw
When it comes to homework help in college, students will likely know Chegg as the handy online homework helper. With classes completely virtual in the past year, it is inevitable for students to rely on Chegg and other homework help services for homework or exam problems they might find difficulty solving at some point.
So when it comes to the question every student asks, will you easily get caught cheating on Chegg?
According to Chegg’s Honor Code, one can easily get caught cheating on exams under the Honor Code Investigation requested by their lecturer. Chegg will readily provide lecturers with key information like your IP and email address, time of question posted, and more to pinpoint your identity.
With Chegg’s strict guidelines and terms on academic integrity, there are better ways you can utilize Chegg to benefit from homework or exams. If you also want to learn how to outsmart the anti-cheating system, this article is here to help you.
How to Prevent Getting Caught Using Chegg
When it comes to digital privacy, Chegg doesn’t exactly let its user have control over the information they want to share. Chegg uses internet cookies that collect the IP (Internet Protocol) addresses of users to easily identify the students using Chegg, so the most basic and effective approach is to conceal your digital footprint while browsing or using Chegg.
If you’re a new or existing Chegg user, this other article on how to maximize your Chegg Study and pay $6 for an extra month might be helpful.
Out of the 3 main approaches we recommend as the most convenient are:
1. Browse Chegg Using Mobile Data
A smart way is to conceal your IP address to browse Chegg on your mobile data. Whether if you’re using a laptop, computer, or phone to browse or use Chegg, always switch to your mobile data to conceal your IP address. Since your mobile data and wifi share different IP addresses, this handy help conceal your IP address nicely.
Make sure to stay consistent while browsing Chegg on your mobile data. To make sure this method works in your favor, keep the type of internet connection you use for Chegg and daily browsing separate. What you want to do is keep the digital trails separate if your professor ever cross-references the IP address you use on Chegg and school student portal website.
2. Remote Access From A Different Device
If you don’t want to invest in a VPN, another easy way and free option to conceal your digital is by remotely accessing Chegg through a different computer with a different internet connection. As long as you remotely access these devices for using Chegg instead of using your device for school, the IP address you use on Chegg should not match the one you use to access school websites. Free software for non-commercial use include:
Teamviewer is easy to use and set up while providing useful remote device controls for its users. With its Easy Remote Access turned on, users can access a device whenever while another device is switched on.
AnyDesk is another great free alternative. It offers lower latency compared to other services while offers faster and more stable connections. Perfect for simple and easy tasks like browsing websites on a different device.
3. Use a VPN connection
Chipping in a few dollars a month for a VPN helps mask your digital identity by simply changing your IP address through using an anonymous connection. Although you should know most VPN servers are blocked by Chegg, making your VPN connection useless for Chegg. Still, there are people who still can use VPN while browsing Chegg by switching around with the servers available. Below are few VPN services we recommend:
NordVPN – Best known and used for its streaming capabilities as it provides users with the fastest speed. If you want to watch Netflix which is only accessible in certain countries, NordVPN is one of the most options currently available.
CyberGhost – This service is also heavily favored for its no-log features which means they do not save information of your personal details. Another notable use for CyberGhost is torrenting as it does a good job at concealing user’s digital privacy.
The main idea is to keep your digital footprint as anonymous as possible, seperating the IP addresses you use to access Chegg accounts from your wifi might help you masks most of the your digital footprints.
If you have other worries like having your credit card information revealed, you can always register an anonymous credit card at Privacy with no minimum credit requirement specifically designed for one-time use.
Regardless of how effective these methods are, you should know that when a professor acknowledges or suspects cheating activities on Chegg, there is virtually no turning back even if you remove the questions. From there, whether or not your professor decides to take action is completely up to their control and within their rights to go out of their way to identify the students cheating on exams.
Thus, these methods do not guarantee success from escaping from trouble and consequences, but if you manage to elude the investigation until final grades are needed to submit by professors, then time constraints will keep your lecturer from catching you.
How Chegg Identifies Students Suspected of Cheating
When a Chegg Honor Code Investigation is initiated by your school authority, Chegg provides your instructors with a handful of user details, and the amount of information might surprise you! With major details like the time of question uploaded, it hints that a student is cheating on a particular test. In short, the details are more than sufficient to give away your identity to your professors even if you fabricate lies to cover up.
User information Chegg provides:
- The username, email address, and IP address of the student who uploaded the problem
- The date and time of the question uploaded
- The date and time of the expert answered provided
- The “expert solution” to the problem
- The institution that the student’s account stated they attended
- Credit card information
In a Reddit post, a user shared how Chegg provides details of both the asker and viewers to professors even before they ask for it. In the image of the excel sheets below, details of both the asker and viewer are accessible for professors to review.
Although one can easily fake an email, username, or name of the institution stated for a Chegg account, however, your Internet Protocol (IP) address is the easiest factor that exposes your identity. Through this information provided by Chegg, the easiest way for instructors to find out your identity is by matching both the IP address you use on Chegg and university websites like Canvas or student portals.
Is Using Chegg Against The Academic Integrity Guideline?
When it comes to certain homework or quizzes assigned in your course, the use of Chegg for homework help or assistance can be an exception from cheating conducts. However, the answer is obvious when it comes to exams, as students should know they are not permitted to request any external help from books or the internet unless stated or permitted. Even if your professor explicitly specifies an open-internet exam, posting exam questions on Chegg certainly violates the exam guidelines because answers are not directly provided with your own effort.
Other Useful features of Chegg for Homework
Besides only relying on Chegg to find exam questions, there might be other features that you might’ve missed which might be of good use to you. Among the other homework services Chegg offers are:
- Textbook question solutions
- An essay or journal plagiarism checker (Available for Chegg Writing subscription)
- Chegg Math Solver and graphing capabilities
- Create and practice homework problems with Flashcards
- Textbook retail and rental services at cheap prices
| Chegg Study | $14.95/month |
| Chegg Study Plan | $19.95/month |
| Chegg Writing | $9.95/month |
| Chegg Math Solver | $9.95/month |
Related Questions
How reliable are the answers from Chegg experts? Chegg experts’ answers are often reliable up to Sophomore level courses. For course materials from Junior year and above, answers provided by Chegg experts tend to fall behind to provide more in-depth and error-free solutions.
Is using Chegg for homework cheating? Using Chegg for homework is not generally not considered cheating as homework is generally open for discussions. Unless stated by your professor to show your original work, otherwise using Chegg for homework should not cause you any trouble.
Will information of question viewers also be shared by Chegg? Yes, according to testimonials of people involved in Honor Code Investigation cases, any viewers of the particular question will also be revealed to the professor who initiated the investigation.
Will deleting your questions posted on Chegg remove evidence? Even after Chegg takes down your question to restrict access to the public, Chegg still keeps a copy of this data and will still provide Professors with the data. In short, there is no way to completely remove the evidence from the investigation once you post the questions.
Can you input a different school you’re attending for your Chegg account? You don’t necessarily have to put your real school and definitely input a different school name. In fact, we suggest against the idea of putting your real school info.
