Feds: Chegg Data Breaches Exposed 40 Million Users

Plus, New Zealand's University CEO Embarrasses Himself. Plus, more on AI writing and cheating.

Nov 01, 2022

Issue 161

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Academic Integrity Policies - I’m reviewing academic integrity policies, with a focus on remote testing and proctoring, and plagiarism. If you know of an academic integrity policy or practice guide that you think is good or innovative or outstanding in some way and would share it, please do. A reply e-mail reaches me. Thank you.

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Chegg’s “Careless” Data Security and the FTC

Big news yesterday as Chegg, which you likely know is among the world’s largest providers of cheating services, was sued by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for what it called “careless” data security, including at least four data breaches since 2017.

Chegg has, it seems, agreed to a settlement already, though that proposed resolution is subject to public comment for 30 days. The settlement is shockingly light - basically that Chegg promises to do better.

Even so, there’s plenty of eye-popping information in the FTC announcement. This, for example:

a former Chegg contractor used login information the company shared with employees and outside contractors to access one of Chegg’s third-party cloud databases containing personal information of approximately 40 million customers. The exposed personal information included names, email addresses, passwords, and for certain users, sensitive scholarship data such as dates of birth, parents’ income range, sexual orientation, and disabilities.

And:

the ed tech company’s lax security practices resulted in four separate data breaches in a span of just a few years, leading to the misappropriation of personal information about approximately 40 million consumers.

Just to start - 40 million customers. Chegg has data on 40 million customers. For comparison, there are about 19 million college students in the United States right now. And since Chegg’s main business product is their cheating service, which generates something like 80% of its income, you ought to be able to draw some inferences.

Second, and perhaps even more shocking, Chegg has data on customers’ sexual orientation and disabilities? Wow. And they left it exposed? Double wow.

I have three notes in closing.

One, Chegg is set to announce its earnings this afternoon - Tuesday, November 1. That the FTC made this case public the day before seems intentional, though I cannot be sure what it means.

Two, given the data breaches, exposure of extremely sensitive student data and obviously “careless” data integrity at Chegg, I expect the folks who rallied for “student data privacy” and against academic integrity companies to absolutely scream. Though I won’t hold my breath. In fact, I will wager a lunch check that very few of the privacy crusaders will even mention Chegg’s student data malpractice.

And, finally, three. The FTC gets a fail on its description of Chegg which it says:

sells educational products and services directly to high school and college students. That includes renting textbooks, guiding customers in their search for scholarships, and offering online tutoring

Absurd and blind.

At least when the New York Times covered the FTC action they included:

Teachers have complained that the service has enabled widespread cheating. Students even have a nickname for copying answers from the platform: “chegging.”

“Teachers have complained” is pretty peak passive for a billion-dollar company that profits by selling answers to homework and test questions. But it’s better than nothing, I guess.

Just in case anyone needed a reminder as to why they’re not an honest education company, the FTC has a note or two.

“The Grade-Boosting Possibilities of Text-Generating Software”

Just days after Inside Higher Ed opened its pages to let someone reassure us that cheating with AI writing was “nothing to worry about” (see Issue 159), reporting over at The Information has a different view.

At least it feels like a different view. I can only see the first few paragraphs because the whole article requires a subscription of $39 a month, which is nutty.

But those first few graphs and the headlines make a compelling point. The headlines are:

Students Are Using AI Text Generators to Write Papers—Are They Cheating?
High school and college students are awakening to the grade-boosting possibilities of text-generating software. Their teachers are struggling to catch up.

The article starts with “West,” a student who “didn’t want to” spend equal time on the classroom, expected assignments and tests. So,

he turned to a homework-completion trick he’d started using the year before in high school. He logged into GPT-3, a text-generating tool developed by OpenAI, which can create written content from simple prompts … [which is] also increasingly helping students like West avoid some of the tedium of academic writing and skip right to the fun part (being done).

West says:

“When people are children, they imagine that a machine can do their homework. And I just happened to stumble upon that machine.”

So, there you go. Nothing to worry about.

Another Cheating Scandal in New Zealand, Universities Chief Executive Embarrasses Himself

There is another major contract cheating scandal brewing in New Zealand. Most of the coverage is from New Zealand Herald, for which I am buying a subscription to be able to share the details. I’ll get back to you.

The short version is that a writer based in Africa has come forward to say they’d written hundreds of papers for New Zealand students through a contract cheating site based in China. The writer said they’d worked for students who obtained degrees without writing a single paper honestly.

None of this is news. Shocking and troubling, I’d hope. But not unique in any way.

Before I can get into the coverage details from the NZ Herald, a radio show in New Zealand interviewed Universities New Zealand Chief Executive, Chris Whelan on the topic. The segment is just four minutes and worth a quick listen.

Whelan says of the new contract cheating news that:

“we don’t think it’s widespread”

He adds that it’s “very unlikely” that anyone scored a degree in New Zealand without writing a single assignment because it’s “not possible doing only essays.” Which means he kind of missed the point.

Even so, I’ve written before that essay mills and contract cheating are not the same thing - all essay mills are contract cheating; essay mills are a very small portion of contract cheating. For reasons I do not understand, in many parts of the world, a focus on “contract cheating” seems to start and stop with paid essays when it’s incredibly easy and common to buy an entire exam online or just pay for the answers in real time, during the exam.

In other words, saying it’s not possible to cheat your way to a degree because you can’t get a degree by writing only essays is obtuse. By far, most academic cheating does not involve essay mills.

But what’s really disturbing is that Whelan says:

“We know from international studies … which indicates that up to eight percent may be using cheating services. Most are using it maybe once, maybe twice for a particularly tricky assignment. They’re not using it all the time.”

That’s beyond obtuse. That’s outright ignorance. Delusional.

Again, cheating services is not just essay mills. Chegg has 40 million customers (see above).

Let me share a very few data points, just topics I’ve covered in “The Cheat Sheet.”

Issue 138 - 75% of College Students Admit to Cheating

Issue 130 - Majority of Canadian College Students “Personally Witnessed” Cheating Last Year

Issue 94 - Majority of College Students Admit to Cheating Behaviors

Issue 72 - New Survey: 60% of US College Students Say They Cheated This Year

In Issue 49, I disputed a similarly absurd assertion that cheating rates were low. There, I shared some history on the topic:

In their book “Cheating in College,” researchers and authors McCabe, Butterfield and Trevino go through a history of deep research on cheating going back to 1964. They say unambiguously:

More than two-thirds of college students report that they engaged in some form of academic misconduct in the previous year.

And:

A significant amount of empirical research supports the conclusion that cheating in colleges and universities is widespread.

Here are just a few examples they cite:

1995 (McLeod) - 83% self-reported cheating in college
2009 (Yardley et al) - 82% of college alumni report having cheated
2009 (Martin, Rao and Sloan) - 61% said they engaged in plagiarism - just plagiarism

In 1964, in what’s considered the first serious study of cheating in America, Bowers found (a revised to) 50% of students admitted to engaging in academic dishonesty. A 1990/91 study by McCabe and Trevino put the rate of self-reported cheating behavior at 74%. A 1993/94 study by McCabe and Trevino identified the cheating rate at 87%. A 1999/2000 study by McCabe and the Center for Academic Integrity pegged cheating behavior at 83%. A 2002-2010 study by McCabe et al found 65%.

Most of these studies took place before “cheating services” were a thing - before they advertised and before cheating was universally available and anonymous, before online classes.

For a university leader to say that 8% of students use cheating services is embarrassing. I simply cannot think of another word for it.

Anyway, I will get more into the New Zealand thing soon.

South Africa Requires Academic Pledge for High School Matriculation Exams

News in South Africa is that high school seniors taking tests for possible acceptance into college programs are being required to sign “anti-cheating agreements.”

That’s good. Everything that can be done to limit cheating is good. But there’s good evidence to suggest that such pledges have marginal impact (see Issue 108). Further, it’s probably not a great sign that in the article, the education minster referred to the pledge as:

part of the administrative paperwork that must be completed by schools

The exams in South Africa are proctored, which is helpful.

Still, I’m not sure I’d ever agree with a non-profit leader who was also quoted in the article saying:

“So at this stage the concern regarding learners who attempt to cheat has no basis.”

Sure.