29 ms·

ProctorU is dystopian spyware

• diebeforei485 5y ago
  This sort of thing is why we sometimes need a platform regulator / "App Store". Customers can't defend themselves against such intrusions of privacy from their school/government. And employers too. They want you to respond to emails at all hours, and ask for way too much control over your device in exchange. This is slowly being changed with Android work profile and Apple "user enrollments", thankfully.
  • chuckee 5y ago
    I sure am glad we have Google and Apple looking out for us, instead of the traditional unions.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • aaomidi 5y ago
    Or alternatively basic privacy laws that cover students, etc too.
  • acdha 5y ago
    It needs to be a legal requirement with teeth: these tools would never be allowed through the app store approval process but that's not a problem as long as they're allowed to simply say you have to buy a laptop instead. One alternate way to prevent this would be liability: if the institutions using this had to reimburse all of their users for every security hole in their mandatory software or the risk due to the security settings they require you to disable, it'd complete change the calculation for them.
  • capableweb 5y ago
    I don't really understand your point. ProctorU has apps on both Play Store and App Store, how does Apple and Google save us here? Seems they have no problem hosting software for ProctorU.
    • diebeforei485 5y ago
      What they have on the App Store and Play Store doesn't come close to the invasiveness of their desktop apps. > Seems they have no problem hosting software for ProctorU. The restrictions are on what their apps can do, not on who published it.
  • Siira 5y ago
    App stores are actually an enabler for this sort of cancer; Apple is already speaking about reporting people to the police, they can obviously add an anti-cheat as well. And there will be no way escaping that.
• prima-facie 5y ago
  This looks like something the UK Gov could use for SELT exams, visa & immigration tests or other similar secure tests approved by the government. At the moment these are taken in person in secure buildings where you are identified at the entrance, your belongings are stored in a locker, and the exam itself is taken in a secure room on computers with no/limited internet connection, etc. You are timed and monitored.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• ajnin 5y ago
  What's the legality of all this? I assume refusing to install ProctorU will fail your exam, so you don't really have a choice, when the process presents you with all kinds of check boxes and consent forms it's mostly doing the motions of informed consent, but at no step do you have a real choice. Surely no sane person would allow this blatant invasion of privacy willingly, this is practically duress.
• mountainofdeath 5y ago
  ProctorU is a mandatory trojan that ETS (among others) require. It's also poorly built to the point where it changes random Windows settings, takes over all kinds of management features, requires full admin access on a personal computer (not a university or corporate managed one) while burning 50% CPU. Naturally, it's next to impossible to remove once installed. I speak from personal experience
• ManBlanket 5y ago
  I was entertained until this undoubtedly vaccinated hero used Covid as an excuse for not taking an in-person exam, despite writing this article in November of 2021. It's okay if you don't want to do something, but stop exploiting Covid. If you're still doing this it sounds ridiculous. Get over it.
• bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  is there any non-dystopian spyware?
  • datameta 5y ago
    I don't think you're phrasing your idea well. Perhaps you mean that any piece of software that allows surveillance has the propensity to trend toward being misused? It seems to me spyware is a loaded word and has its connotations. What has happened here has been on a massive scale very quickly in a way we have not seen before. Edit: For example, remote sensors placed in a power plant or foundry where people work also would constitute surveillance. But it is in an environment where carefully calibrated machines can otherwise fail catastrophically.
    • bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      I would say if it does not spy all the time it runs it can't be spyware - does Teamviewer spy all the time or can it just be made to spy as a side effect of its main purpose?
      • datameta 5y ago
        Teamviewer came to my mind as well but I'm not sure desktop monitoring is quite on the same level as a camera pointed at one's face. Unless teamviewer made some strides in the years I haven't used it.. To add, I suppose what I am really getting at is that it may be more useful to address ProctorU in particular rather than bring it under the same umbrella as other less used surveillance software.
    • blueflow 5y ago
      Its a dumb, but critical question. I enjoy the question as it is, as it inspires some good thinking. For me, it made me realize that the word 'dystopian' in the title adds no facts to anything, its just a judgement. A negative one.
  • idrios 5y ago
    The dystopian part of it is that it's institutionalized.
• user3939382 5y ago
  I spent years running a school and am an edtech developer: education needs to (and probably will) evolve to suit the nature of remote learning. We're in this weird phase where we're trying to shoehorn models and constraints from the in-person learning paradigm into remote learning.
  • beauzero 5y ago
    My wife has taught for 3 years at an online only state charter school (US). The single most difficult issue to solve (waste of time) is integration between foundation school management software such as Infinite Campus (where grades are kept) and third party learning packages (where assignments come from).
    • user3939382 5y ago
      Funny you mention that. My work is building course content and assessment delivery systems that can be plugged into any LMS. It’s the leading (modular) solution to this exact problem.
  • ricardobayes 5y ago
    If this will involve getting rid of closed-book exams, I think the world can only benefit from it.
  • chaosite 5y ago
    Sure, and I think it's hard to find someone who is perfectly satisfied with the status quo. Coming up with a replacement is the hard part.
    • david_allison 5y ago
      Prediction: The replacements will come from adult education, not from traditional academia.
  • devwastaken 5y ago
    I've seen it done successfully at some uni's. Zoom for the lecture, and a far less invasive proctoring tool for the tests. You can even have in person and remote in the same class if the material is made available online.
• smoldesu 5y ago
  All of these testing suites are absolutely intrusions of privacy. Proctorio had a portion of their EULA where they essentially stated that they will retain all of your information (your test results, your webcam footage, your microphone recording, etc.) for an undisclosed amount of time, and if the Proctorio brand were to ever be purchased by another private entity, that footage would become their property by extension. Pretty unbelievable stuff, being forced to take a test in an environment like that would probably cause me to spiral out into a nervous breakdown after a few minutes.
  • labster 5y ago
    Don’t read the EULA; just mindlessly click ‘Agree’ like everybody else. The corporations have already won, so there’s no need to give yourself anxiety over it.
    • sudosysgen 5y ago
      It's not like you have a choice. If you refuse the EULA you will fail the class.
      • phillc73 5y ago
        Relevant discussion from earlier today: The Magnificent Bribe https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29154178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29154178 > Surrender to the power of complex technological systems — allow them to oversee, track, quantify, guide, manipulate, grade, nudge, and surveil you — and the system will offer you back an appealing share in its spoils. What is good for the growth of the technological system is presented as also being good for the individual, and as proof of this, here is something new and shiny. Sure, that shiny new thing is keeping tabs on you (and feeding all of that information back to the larger technological system), but it also lets you do things you genuinely could not do before.....The danger, however, was that “once one opts for the system no further choice remains.”
  • MengerSponge 5y ago
    My favorite moment when my institution was evaluating proctoring software was when a faculty member asked: "What if a student's naked underaged sibling/child walks into frame during the exam? What is your corporate policy on evaluation and retention of child pornography?" Shockingly, smarmy ed-tech hucksters don't have a good answer to this one.
• negroni 5y ago
  I had the same issue with ProctorU. Installing Windows on a 64GB USB and booting off that anytime I had to take an exam solved the problem to my satisfaction.
  • notreallyserio 5y ago
    I suppose I'm extra paranoid because I have a dedicated (older) computer for courses that require some sort of installed software, including Zoom. I don't want my unmounted hard drives available to the software.
    • nisegami 5y ago
      I suppose the alternative would be unplugging them, but your approach works too.
    • blibble 5y ago
      lock the disks using ATA commands then unlock them later
  • sjcoles 5y ago
    Still gives access to the EFI firmware. Hard pass.
• Petabits 5y ago
  In this scenario couldn't you just run it in a VM? Or would their software trip once they realize they can't see vacation photos on your desktop?
  • javajosh 5y ago
    The article states the software won't run in a VM
  • josephcsible 5y ago
    This kind of software almost universally detects and refuses to run in VMs.
    • donkarma 5y ago
      It is not hard to create a hardened VM. If anti-cheats can't detect it, neither can some off-brand user mode teaching software
      • branon 5y ago
        Got some links to resources about doing this? Would be interested in having a hardened VM on-hand for things like this.
        • donkarma 5y ago
          KVM is probably your best bet on Linux and VMware the best on Windows. https://github.com/hzqst/VmwareHardenedLoader https://github.com/hzqst/VmwareHardenedLoader works for VMware but doesn't work against some modern anti-cheats, but KVM universally works against anti-cheats when configured properly with RTDSC spoofing and such
      • acdha 5y ago
        It's harder than you think, and remember that the consequence is not “I can't play a game until I revert my config” but “I was reported to my college for an ethics violation and now my $$$ degree is in question” or “My professional organization has been told that I attempted to cheat and the certification I need to keep my job is in jeopardy”. There are many things which are technically possible which are not a favorable cost-benefit for most people. This is in the same category as those guys who relied on technically being able to fly without showing ID to the TSA — there's a reason why it was mostly affluent white men flying solo, because the potential downsides are much greater for most other categories.
• MengerSponge 5y ago
  Proctor-spyware is also famously biased: https://library.auraria.edu/news/2021/why-online-test-proctoring-biased-expert https://library.auraria.edu/news/2021/why-online-test-procto... I opted out of using spyware in the university physics courses I taught last year, and caught my cheating students the old fashioned way. Proctor-spyware, like airport security, is more about theater than effectiveness. You aren't giving the USMLE or a Bar Exam, so you can take the time to write a good exam and evaluate it correctly.
  • mechanical_bear 5y ago
    > …reinforces white supremacy, sexism, ableism, and transphobia. Article proceeds to use a lot of words to not show any of these being true. I am against it for the general dystopian surveillance normalization it encourages. We don’t need to throw a word salad of made up progressive insults against it to resist its implementation.
  • javajosh 5y ago
    I've never graded tests or papers, but I always assumed cheating would be obvious because if you go to chat with a student about the problem, they will not have anything to say.
    • ht_th 5y ago
      True, but that is not the same as proving someone cheated. Besides, when you have too many students, you cannot talk to all of them one-by-one in any meaningful way. Or assess them in a meaningful way, to be honest. By the way, where I work, management pushes for stuff like proctoring, and more students, and "measurable" results, and so on. As a teacher, I don't care much about the whole grading show.
      • kwhitefoot 5y ago
        > you have too many students, Then the students are not getting what they pay for.
    • Vrondi 5y ago
• spoonjim 5y ago
  I’ve never seen a critique of proctoring software that offers an alternate solution to the problem (remotely delivering a skills assessment that is used to allocate resources in an environment known to have rampant cheating)
  • ketzu 5y ago
    And the ones that do propose alternatives do so from a very narrow point of view. Oral exams are much more time consuming and simply not practical in many situations. Projects and seminar papers have similar problems, especially in early semesters.
  • notreallyserio 5y ago
    Have students sit for an exam and then follow up with a question or two (from a pool of N), live, to see if they actually understand the material. We're paying hundreds or thousands each, they can easily afford to spend the time.
  • yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    There's a discussion upthread right now about making the whole problem irrelevant by switching to open book tests and/or having a 5-minute conversation with the student to make sure that they actually have some clue what they're talking about.
  • hackermailman 5y ago
    Best way is do away with exams and have projects graded instead. Math write a survey paper on the subject that demonstrates expertise, then orally defend it on live chat where you can't easily cheat, that's what my school did but only had european accreditation whereas regional US likes 20th century examination style.
    • spoonjim 5y ago
      Anything subjectively graded like a project is a big vector for introducing evaluator bias.
  • deleted 5y ago
• hackermailman 5y ago
  How do enroll in a Msc program and not read how exams are done? I took remote university for a while, you either go to some exam invigilator and pay the $20 for them to monitor you (some campus libraries it's free) or you have someone volunteer to do it who meets the criteria. Big deal this article is a twitter quality rant. The problem is of course regional accreditation rules of proctored exams
• rickspencer3 5y ago
  I'm waiting for the world to catch up with the fact that looking up information while you are working is a core part of any real job. Do I care if my Linux Security Professional spends a few minutes looking up information on the internet before taking some action? It's not the case that anyone can solve any problem so long as they have a search engine. Without domain knowledge, an open ended web search is not going to lead to a convincing answer except for the most trivial questions. This extends to coding interviews as well. Using the resources at one's disposal to get a sense of the landscape before diving into algorithms must surely be part of the job, right? What do I care if a developer needs a quick reminder before diving into a solution, or even reads up a bit and scans someone else's code before answering? What is the value in ensuring that people have perfect recall if this is something that will almost never be necessary in a real world job?
  • bengale 5y ago
    It's always seemed a little off. I've been coding for 15 or so years and I still sometimes completely blank on certain javascript array functions and need to google it.
  • vianneychevalie 5y ago
    In consulting I produce better thought-out and constructed recommendations if I parse a book and previously-delivered decks of slides. Hell, even ISO standards. On the other hand, at least a basic level of recollection is necessary for quick thinking in meetings, you don't always have the time to look up documentation.
    • Sebb767 5y ago
      And you can perfectly evaluate that by setting a realistic (!) time limit and judging the quality of the answers. It's absolutely irrelevant how much recollection you have if you still manage to solve the problem efficiently.
  • dunnevens 5y ago
    I took an astronomy course a few years ago which had a fairly forward-thinking (if a bit lazy) instructor. The initial tests were fairly conventional. But for the intense test right before the final, he gave us a comprehensive take-home. With the full assumption we'd be hitting Google hard for the more difficult questions. He knew this was a complex topic. Thought we'd learn more and retain more with a test where we had to show some initiative in finding the right answers without the stress of having to remember it on the spot. Plus, it doubled as a study guide for the actual final which was only a couple of weeks later. I thought it was a remarkably kind thing to do. Took out a little stress. Gave even the struggling students an easy "A". And it worked as a comprehensive guide to almost everything we covered.
• acdha 5y ago
  They also lie about supporting Firefox. A family member needed to use this for a professional license. Following the instructions (which is basically turning off most security warnings and installing a bunch of malware) didn't work and the first thing support said was to install Chrome. Shockingly, this was due to some JavaScript relying on an older Chrome proprietary API so there's no possible way they actually tested it against their alleged support matrix.
  • chuckee 5y ago
    Sounds like an open and shut case of false advertising, a crime.
    • acdha 5y ago
      Sure, got a few million dollars to bring a lawsuit knowing that if it starts go somewhere they'll issue a 3-line patch and blame the intern for not testing it?
      • EMIRELADERO 5y ago
        I know it's just a saying, but I feel the need to de-mistify this. Lawsuits don't cost millions. Court fees are absolutely never that high, and lawyers, while some may be expensive, are generally affordable for ~middle class (or even lower class if someone wants to do pro-bono work for you) The whole "lawsuits cost millions" thing is a myth perpetuated by big corporations and further relied by normal folk who hear it from somewher else, which probably heard it from somewhere else, and so on. When you read in the news "X company wasted $XX million in legal fees", what it actually means is "they stretched out the case with a team of very expensive corporate lawyers whoses price ranges are in the millions".
        • lisper 5y ago
          > The whole "lawsuits cost millions" thing is a myth That may be, but they can easily cost many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Lawyers typically bill at multiple hundreds of dollars an hour so it doesn't take a lot of hours to rack up five- or six-figure costs. That's high-stakes poker for most people. I once sued a neighbor for their barking dog. It cost me over $10,000 before I pulled the plug. https://blog.rongarret.info/2009/07/dog-days.html https://blog.rongarret.info/2009/07/dog-days.html
• badRNG 5y ago
  At least Proctorio (despite suing a college student under DMCA for reversing their software to show the extent of its capabilities [1]) doesn't go to this far a level. It's a browser extension that I can install for an exam, and remove afterward. It gets microphone, screen, and camera inputs, and permissions are handled through the browser. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26898651 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26898651
• cwdegidio 5y ago
  They also are terrible at how they treat your local machine. I had to use them for a course I was in. I was having issues connecting because they kept insisting I used some Flash based tool. Their proctor started going into various settings on my Mac, clicking rather carelessly and what seemed like at random then declared the platform was unsupported. I immediately said "ok, so now your going to return my machine back to the state that it was in before you started messing around..." They immediately dodged the question and ended the chat. It took 3 more attempts to even get the test started and like a week to find all the damage they did to my settings. Terrible company.
• abrookins 5y ago
  For the certification program at Redis University (https://university.redis.com/ https://university.redis.com/), we previously used ProctorU because that's what other folks were doing -- proctored exams for certification. Buuut, after a while, we were like, why subject people to this? This is crazy. And why even charge for certs anyway? I'm happy we're done with proctoring!
  • scandox 5y ago
    You know I attended The University of Memcached but years later when I asked for a copy of my degree certificate ... well you know the rest.
• wespiser_2018 5y ago
  I'm another reluctant ProctorU user, and using it thrust upon me if I wanted to complete my online master in CS. It's spyware, and it really is that awful. At least for my tests, it's required that you buy an external camera, and scan the entire room before taking the test, it records you the entire time, and runs in the background (and foreground) with system level privileges. Taking a test this way is very stressful this way, compared to just walking into a building with just a pen and your phone on silent. Nearly every college student during the pandemic had to use ProctorU in order to complete their classes, or a similar alternative. Quite disturbing the experience is normalized, and I wish there were an official OS level feature for "report all activity on the system from time X to Y", without having to use a sketchy third party app. I wish the author the best of luck fighting the requirement to use ProctorU.
  • Sebb767 5y ago
    > I wish there were an official OS level feature for "report all activity on the system from time X to Y" Oh please don't. This type of espionage should be discouraged, not officially supported.
    • teawrecks 5y ago
      The thing is, it still wouldn't be enough. Ex. I currently use magisk to tell Google Play and all apps that my phone isn't rooted, allowing me to use app features they would otherwise lock me out of.
    • smoldesu 5y ago
      If you're using MacOS, this API already exists: https://eclecticlight.co/2020/10/27/xprotect-what-do-we-know-about-it/ https://eclecticlight.co/2020/10/27/xprotect-what-do-we-know...
  • ixacto 5y ago
    Well if you feel like putting something like this music holder above/behind your webcam that will do the trick to hold notes lol. https://www.amazon.com/American-Plating-502N-Valve-Instrument/dp/B000EENGG2/ref=sr_1_47?keywords=marching+band+music+holder&qid=1636501956&qsid=135-9799198-1434033&sr=8-47&sres=B0002I6LW6%2CB01DALGSVA%2CB008XB1C0A%2CB01MZ79EHL%2CB0002F7IXA%2CB07FNR13Y9%2CB0009NUR92%2CB07P4F2PFG%2CB09G2YH1LK%2CB000XZXE50%2CB016EO91IC%2CB00065LM2E%2CB09DW1RB5D%2CB07Q27D2Z8%2CB000EELB1Y%2CB07B4LB284%2CB0002E536K%2CB01MQKC2TT%2CB07T5D98RW%2CB07NYWYZ59 https://www.amazon.com/American-Plating-502N-Valve-Instrumen...
• zuminator 5y ago
  As a workaround, someone could buy a new laptop from a major retailer right before the exam, install the software, take the test, uninstall the software, then return the laptop for a refund.
• LegoZombieKing 5y ago
  This is my first comment on this site after lurking for a few years, I thought I would add my personal experience using ProctorU and how weird it feels to willing give up my personal privacy to take a test online. I go to UOPeople, which is a tuition free online school and I am getting a 4 year computer science degree (for like $5k which is crazy), anyway of the 40 courses you have to take only 11 are proctored. UOP offers 2 choices for proctoring, A) find a real life proctor, or B) use ProctorU. I don’t have the luxury of finding a real person + with covid its more unlikely, so ProctorU it is. All in all its not the worst thing in the world, but when I first read the requirements for the ProctorU testing environment and technical requirements I almost quit school completely to look for alternative paths. Some of the crazy requirements include: Testing space must have nothing on the walls, or floors. You can’t wear glasses while taking the exam. Your desk must be clear of everything besides the specific testing materials (calculator if your lucky, and maybe a pencil and paper) Your device needs a webcam, so that they can not only watch you for the entire 1 hour and 30 minutes where you take a test that determines 40% of your grade, but also so that you can show them each wall, floor and under your desk. And thats just the physical space requirements. I had to empty my closet and use my laptop to take this test because their is no way I just have an extra room for testing… The digital requirements were pretty intense as well, access to folders they had to right too, chrome settings and a whole bunch of wack stuff. I created a dummy account just to take tests. When you go into the program they have you download it acts like a 1 way mirror, you can hear the proctor(if you are lucky to have a human proctor) and they can watch you, your screen and hear you. I had some tech issues once and I was grateful to have a proctor with a sense of humor who was able to help me through it. I can’t say my privacy is worth a cheaper degree, but I hope that this doesn’t become normalized, because it is not a pleasant experience.
  • BossingAround 5y ago
    > You can’t wear glasses while taking the exam Don't know what class/proctor you took, but I took several UoP tests with ProctorU and never had issues with glasses.
    • cwdegidio 5y ago
• IceWreck 5y ago
  Most of these proctoring software easily detect Virtualbox, VMware, etc. But QEMU/KVM which is the de-facto hypervisor on Linux is harder to detect. Even the others which I mentioned before can be hardened to evade detection. And if you do a little bit of tinkering and intercept traffic, you can make it so that all the cheating reports from the "AI" never leaves you computer. I've never played with ProctorU but have experimented with a couple of other similar software. They usually send regular reports every five minutes and some anomaly reports (some extra software running on your computer, another person in room, face not visible, etc) when something happens. You need to intercept and modify traffic to not send these anomaly reports. This is easier if its browser based, but you need to install systemwide certs if its install-able software, and a lot more work if they utilize certificate pinning inside binary install-able software. I have never encountered the last one though.
  • PenguinCoder 5y ago
    When I had to deal with Proctor-U, the software refused to run under a KVM VM. Detection of anything remotely VM hardware related, made it alert and the proctor refuse to continue. That's after fighting with the software to have it installed in the VM to begin with.
  • 10000truths 5y ago
    Most virtual machine detection boils down to checking the CPUID hypervisor bit and vendor string. Luckily, it is possible to configure VMWare, VirtualBox and QEMU to spoof those values in the guest machine.
    • eulers_secret 5y ago
      This sent me down the rabbit hole on defeating this... I cannot stand this sort of authoritarian horsesh... Defeating malware's VM detection is very interesting. Links for others if they're interested: https://github.com/a0rtega/pafish https://github.com/a0rtega/pafish collects all the best-known detection methods into a test suite. This issue is interesting/has links for sure: https://github.com/spender-sandbox/cuckoo-modified/issues/459 https://github.com/spender-sandbox/cuckoo-modified/issues/45...
• otrahuevada 5y ago
  if this is paid for and this requirements were only disclosed after the fact, there might be enough money to be had here to entice a lawyer into making the course provider abandon the software. That's more or less the only silver lining I can think of here.
• bastardoperator 5y ago
  Stop testing people on memorization and then you don't have to worry about cheating. Allow people to recall data with resources typically available to them in the real world. This is the same issue I have with code/interview challenges that say don't use the internet. I would be a fool to not use the resources readily available to me or at least validate what I think I already know.
  • dehrmann 5y ago
    > Stop testing people on memorization and then you don't have to worry about cheating I'm not following. If you don't know the material, you have same incentive to cheat.
  • sabas123 5y ago
    It could also help prevent unwanted communication between the students and the outside world (or between themselves).
  • metalliqaz 5y ago
    nearly every exam I had at University, as a Computer Engineer, allowed 1 sheet of notes. So they were already not focusing on memorization even 20 years ago.
    • kwhitefoot 5y ago
      All of my B.Sc. Applied Physics exams including the finals were open note (anything in your own hand plus any duplicated sheets handed out in lectures). My finals were in 1977, Exeter Uni. There was no limit on how many notes one brought in to an exam. Some of the weaker students turned up with rucksacks full of ring binders and the invigilators had frequently to admonish them to make less noise rustling the papers! Those students almost all failed or attained only a pass degree. In my opinion this successfully weeded out those who thought that memorisation was enough. The exams typically never asked anything that could be answered simply by looking up the answer in notes or even the textbook.
    • rootusrootus 5y ago
• nobrains 5y ago
  I am looking for an exam proctoring solution at my employer (an accredited online university). What are my best solutions? Any solution can be hacked (i.e. workaround it’s limitations). And without proctoring there is no guarantee students will not have someone else attempt the exam on their behalf or send the exam to someone to solve it for them. The only approach I see, but not favored by the Deans, is testing centers (prometric, etc.). Any suggestions?
  • Kaibeezy 5y ago
    https://www.tax.org.uk/onlineexams https://www.tax.org.uk/onlineexams
• bambax 5y ago
  > It looks like I can go to one of their regulated test centres and take the exam there. ProctorU is absolutely, positively insane, but the alternative sounds quite reasonable.
• gzer0 5y ago
  Dartmouth medical school accused 17 students of cheating; they found over half of the accused students was due to erroneously generated data. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/09/technology/dartmouth-geisel-medical-cheating.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/09/technology/dartmouth-geis...
  • babypuncher 5y ago
    I think I would rather let a dozen cheaters "get away with it" than let even one innocent person have their academic career damaged by a false positive.
    • mountainofdeath 5y ago
      Cheating is like crime. A criminal needs to be right every time to not be caught but enforcement only needs to be right once. Even if you let once instance fall through the cracks, it's very unlikely it's an isolated instance.
      • babypuncher 5y ago
        Academic cheating also doesn't seem like a sustainable life plan. Even if you get your degree and land a job, what are you going to do when your boss and co-workers realize you don't actually know how to do the things you have a degree in?
        • raxxorrax 5y ago
          You could stay in academia and contribute to the replication crisis.
• handrous 5y ago
  Oh wow. I just had an epiphany. This is why companies are still treating VR as a serious product that might have a large market, even as AR seems much better-suited to a mass consumer market and surely not that much farther off than good VR (perhaps closer, even). VR headsets with just a few sensors would make excellent isolation & monitoring tools for things like this. Now I get why Facebook (Meta, whatever) decided to get into it. I'd not been able to piece it together until just now. Of course there's a spyware angle front & center. It all fits now. Their main market's probably intended to be business, but education makes sense, too.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• mdip 5y ago
  This sort of thing drives me crazy because it just needs someone to ask the question "Why is this necessary?"[0] The reality is that a sufficiently motivated cheat will cheat and will more than likely get away with it regardless of counter-measures when there's not a proctor watching over their shoulder[1]. If the goal is to test proficiency, there has to be better ways that work remotely. Back in High School, "open book" tests were common in my Chemistry and Physics classes. The "open book" rule wasn't to help over privileged kids pass the test -- these were among the hardest tests; the book was useful only for referring to the myriad of formulas which a High School student was not expected to commit to memory, but if you were relying on that reference to tell you exactly what you needed to do to solve the problem, forget it. This, obviously, falls apart in many contexts -- "open internet" tests are difficult to write in many subjects, simply because there are tools designed to answer those questions, immediately[2], but it likely just requires a little creativity. From my own personal experience: I ended up taking a certification exam which was offered online due to COVID. They attempted to re-create the security of "testing in a center" by spyware and procedure (photographing the room from every angle, myself, my drivers license), all trivial to defeat if I was so motivated -- the procedure was even communicated in advance. And it was a certification for writing software[3]. I took practice tests, online, which turned out to be nearly word-for-word what I saw on the test. I knew the answers, anyway, but had I wanted to, I could have spent my entire study time memorizing the test answers -- not technically cheating, but the test has abjectly failed to indicate anything about my expertise. A more useful approach would have been to present me with a program utilizing the features that they wished to test me on, then present a set of multiple choice questions asking questions about that code. With a diversity of test programs and frequent changes, it would reduce the probability that a Google search would yield an immediate answer, testing the candidates ability to solve the problem using all of the tools that are available in the field. Assuming that "testing is still the most reasonable way to assess skill", which is another argument in itself that falls victim to footnote "0", the point is to make irrelevant the forms of cheating that the spyware is attempting to prevent. Both are losing battles against cheating, but the former is less so, and certainly less consumer-hostile. [0] The classic "Why do we do this?" with the most common answer being "Because that's what we've always done" [1] Just off the top of my head, a small camera in the room aimed at the screen and a discrete -- in-ear, like my daughter's (Bluetooth) hearing aids -- ear-phone Bluetooth connected to a mobile phone to a third party in another room with a computer being used to research answers. [2] And in a lot of contexts it still doesn't matter. If there's a tool that changes how that question is solved, and you're testing whether or not someone can solve that specific problem -- not whether or not that somebody can write a tool to solve that problem -- wouldn't it be more intelligent if they solved it using the most appropriate tool? [3] Before I get grief; it was requested that I take it out of the expectation that I would require no study and was needed due to us being a MS Certificate Professional shop.
• miki123211 5y ago
  The use of Proctorio seems to mostly be a U.S. issue. I have never seen it used over here (Poland). My friends from other European countries haven't either, at least when I asked them. I wouldn't be surprised if GDPR prevents them from collecting most of that data. The fact that most colleges here are state-run might also contribute.
  • schroeding 5y ago
    Yep, the GDPR saves us here, thank goodness for that. There are better ways anyway, IMO. At my (german) university, most exams are so personalized (random exercises from a pool in random order, student ids used as const values in calculations, groups A / B / C, etc) that cheating is pretty hard.
• c74ds 5y ago
  I worked with ProctorU in a university setting. Refreshingly, our (very large, public) school did not really want to use the platform, cautioned strongly against it, and were well aware of how invasive it was. They were worried about the potential for student outrage via media channels as a result of the race-based inaccuracies and biases and other issues that were coming up in the media. Oh and ProctorU had a data breach, which students happily reminded the institution of. A very small minority of instructors insisted on using it, and that's what I was helping with. Seeing the backend of this tool was much more worrying than being subjected to it. Simply put, the platform is SO bad, that it could not be used as evidence even in the most blatant cheating cases - for example, the screen capture feed and the webcam feed were two separate files, neither of which was time stamped. If a student had a poor or marginal connection, these two recordings would get out of sync and could never be reconciled. It was so primitive it was laughable. That's on top of the issues you'll find documented elsewhere.
  • saruken 5y ago
    I'd love to see a writeup/documentation on the backend issues you mentioned here. Sounds egregious! Do you have a link to point me to?
    • c74ds 5y ago
      I'm too intimidated to write it up publicly (though I detailed it all internally). A competitor of ProctorU, Proctorio, filed suit against a guy in a similar position to mine at a Canadian university. We're a big enough institution that others look to us for guidance, so I hope our de-facto moratorium on using these tools serves as an example. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/02/student-surveillance-vendor-proctorio-files-slapp-lawsuit-silence-critic https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/02/student-surveillance-v...
  • mountainofdeath 5y ago
    Of course it can be used to catch cheaters. The bar is just so low that ANY suspicion is cause for sounding the alarm. In my SO's case, they told her wearing a sleeveless shirt was "inappropriate" during an online exam and told her to put something that covers her shoulder on so she ended up wearing a sweater in 80F inside. When we reached out to their support, they said there is nothing they can do about it and rattled off some standard script.
• rudian 5y ago
  Nothing in the video is particularly egregious other than having to use your own hardware to do it. All those precautions are followed if you’re in a controlled test environment; Since they can’t control your home and computer, they must ensure you’re not cheating. I don’t see a problem with that, you’re taking a test. That said, I would not like to install this on my computer and would 100% use a separate user to do so. As long as it runs in the home directory I will trash it afterwards. I even use Zoom from my phone rather than installing it on my computer, but if I had to I’d do the same.
  • zeppers 5y ago
    There is an alternative solution to this problem with far less privacy implications.... Examind.io
• Cort3z 5y ago
  What is stopping someone from having a separate machine right next to the infested one?
  • MH15 5y ago
    Proctorio (competing software) can require students to "scan" their room by moving the camera around, making it more difficult to hide a second device.
• goodrubyist 5y ago
  I, for one, love the people who would be proudly installing this because they have "nothing to hide" while chiding those who are (appropriately) concerned.
• antisthenes 5y ago
  I was taking a certificate exam earlier this year, and looked into taking it via ProctorU or the old-fashioned way, at a testing center. After looking at their system requirements and the draconian measures needed to just be able to take my exam (they also require you to have a webcam, which I don't have and to real-time broadcast your private room, where you will be taking the exam, which is a non-starter for me), I realized it would take me longer to set up correctly, than it would take me to drive there, take the test and be back home. I heard some people say we live in a high trust society, but that trust only seems to be going one way. If I don't trust a corporation, I have no agency or power to act on that. But if they don't trust me, they impose these insane draconian measures without any oversight that preclude me from progressing in life, professionally or otherwise. It's fucking insane.
• hospadar 5y ago
  The whole notion of online proctoring seems pretty whack to me also: what world are we training and testing people to live in? The real world has internet, you can search for stuff, you can work from home and take a break. I'm not good at things because I'm always able to magically materialize the right answer out of my mind inside an anechoic faraday chamber, I'm good because I get the right answer in a reasonable amount of time using all the tools available to me (the internet, my brain, books, whatever). I get that there are a few professions where you're really going to need to know the right answer quickly without looking it up under high-pressure situations, and it seems like testing and certifying doctors and lawyers is important enough to society that we can arrange to proctor those tests in person (and still maintain covid safety, disability/poverty access, etc). That level of extreme proctoring security seems pretty dumb for random exams WHERE school <= undergrad. If you elaborately cheat your way through all online classes all the way through undergrad, that seems mostly bad for you
  • imilk 5y ago
    > I get that there are a few professions where you're really going to need to know the right answer quickly without looking it up under high-pressure situations I agree with the premise, but I think you're downplaying this quite a bit. Pretty much any job that you're not doing asynchronous work in front of a computer would apply here. > If you elaborately cheat your way through all online classes all the way through undergrad, that seems mostly bad for you Well it's more than bad for just you. It's bad for the university and everyone else with a degree from there since you are degrading the value of having that degree.
    • maerF0x0 5y ago
      I'm curious about the proportion of careers which are not adaptable to asynchronous/remote work, that _is_ best tested through rote memorization (think multiple choice questions) versus active demonstration (think like having an instructor see you do CPR on a dummy)? Just a thought about how it's weird we argue about how testing should be done online, but not the fact we test online things which are not really online in their nature.
• dehrmann 5y ago
  I'm sympathetic to not requiring students to install spyware on their personal computers, but I also TAed an introductory CS class for freshman engineers and, wow, there was a lot of cheating. No more than 5% of students, but it was enough where you wanted to do something about it, and remote education makes cheating on exams a lot easier.
• robotburrito 5y ago
  A while back I had a remote job interview that required me install spyware on my computer and turn my web cam on so it can record my face while I was doing some computer science puzzle. It made me not want to work at the company anyway. If they treated me like that during the interview, imagine your day to day.
  • xtracto 5y ago
    A friend of mine told me about this Crossover company who screened their remote workers minute by minute, taking photos with their webcam and monitoring their every mouse move and keypress. Sounds quite depressing if true.
• indymike 5y ago
  Unpopular take: ProctorU is trying to solve an unsolvable problem. The only way they can make it work is by dictating the configuration of the device taking the test, and even then they are going to have lots of technical problems with false positives and incompatible software. This leads to impractical outcomes like, "Oh, just borrow your friend's computer" and unsafe situations like, "oh, just allow us to scan your computer for content we don't like" and so on. This is the digital equivalent of forcing students to be naked to take a test in person.
  • t-writescode 5y ago
    This is my general stance, as well. Impossible requirements have been placed on at-home exams and proctored testing; and this company stood up. Are they violating many moral and reasonable privacy codes to do it? Absolutely. It is a huge breech of ethics. But universities and their professors asked for it. Plenty of online educators already know how to (edit: lead) classes and give tests without it; but many, too, are either lazy or overburdened and have asked for this.
    • indymike 5y ago
      > But universities and their professors asked for it. It is interesting that institutions that often have "department of ethics" are the first to be OK with awful products like online proctoring software.
• jellinek 5y ago
  > The whole notion of online proctoring seems pretty whack to me also: what world are we training and testing people to live in? The real world has internet, you can search for stuff, you can work from home and take a break. I agree! I wish more institutions viewed the world as Stanford's Honor Code does. It predates the Internet by many decades: > Open-book Requirement: As stated in the Interpretations of the Honor Code, “If take-home examinations are given, they should not be closed-book examinations…” Open-book exams place no limitations on the materials or resources that a student may access during the exam. https://communitystandards.stanford.edu/resources/faculty-and-tas/exams-and-honor-code#:~:text=Open%2Dbook%20Requirement,may%20access%20during%20the%20exam https://communitystandards.stanford.edu/resources/faculty-an....
• fatcat500 5y ago
  I would probably buy a ~$200 HP Stream and use that... Unfair having to spend such money, but textbooks aren't that much more expensive, and you can use it for more than one course too
• dheera 5y ago
  > Linux/Unix operating systems Well, I guess there's no way for me to use it anyway! > Virtual Machines It's my policy that closed source software gets installed in a virtual machine. Others need to abide by my policy if it's running on MY equipment.
• serjester 5y ago
  I think a lot of people underestimate how rampant cheating is. I knew people in undergrad that would get entire groups together to take online exams. While invasive, ProcotU makes this far more difficult. You could make the argument this is how real life works, but we'll need to radically redesign the current curriculum if the internet becomes fair game. Long term this is a must, but short term not making an effort to stop cheating will corrupt the entire institution - anyone that doesn't cheat is at a severe disadvantage.
  • ixacto 5y ago
    The whole concept of cheating vs using available resources to solve a problem doesn't really make sense IMO. We have a smartphone with google/wolfram alpha/etc with us at all times as well as stack overflow if something isn't working. Why try to memorize the whole damn dictionary this is outdated and archaic...? In the real world my learning of a new piece of software proceeds as follows: the github repository/manual of the software -> stackoverflow/biostars -> google with whatever you want to do.
• LambdaTrain 5y ago
  The fact that a linux security course uses proctoru for exam is the entire sarcastic point.
• Debugreality 5y ago
  It seems to me they should send each student a device for the test with it's own mobile internet so they can use it and turn it off / send it back after.
  • Siira 5y ago
    The student can just use an auxiliary device.
• jmnicolas 5y ago
  A good designed test shouldn't depend on rote memorization, so it would require much less intrusive spying. Example: design a database schema for a grocery store with such and such requirements... you either know or don't know how to do it but you won't find the answer on the web.
• pjdesno 5y ago
  I teach mostly MS students, and at the moment I'm sitting in front of a class taking an exam, so as you might guess I have fairly strong feelings about proctoring. Basically I think that online evaluations have to be completely different than in-person ones. Proctoring is fairly trivial and non-intrusive for in-person tests - don't open your laptop, don't talk to the person next to you. For big tests in small rooms I assign seating. Online is different. Basically there is no reasonable way to keep someone from hiring someone on Chegg to do their entire test for them, and the most horrible proctoring software in the world won't stop a determined cheater from balancing a cell phone at the bottom of their laptop screen... You really need to use a different approach with online assessments, and honestly I don't know if it's possible to use online tests for some of the things that we use in-person tests for.
• masswerk 5y ago
  Just as a small reminder what universities are all about: The dominant reason for the foundation of the Sorbonne was a surge in heresies. The principal idea was to prepare for the next heresy and being able to respond quickly to challenges yet unknown. The university is essentially about a wager on the future, not about mastering the present. Which brings us to what a university should be about: * Understanding principles * Being able to draw connections from principles to novel ends * Being able to argue your point * Being able to discern, whether a point is argued properly or not (according to these rules and the rules of the particular discipline/field) * Knowing about the current state of the art/ideas and their relation to principles Nothing of this includes a use case for spyware like this. It actually indicates that the institution does not manage at least one of those aforementioned goals. And it it's an indication for that institution rather answering to those challenges by a strict regime of established procedures, which is exactly what a university is all not about.
• bo1024 5y ago
  I hate proctoring software with a passion and I will never ever ask my students to use it. But I think it's important to understand where the demand for this software is coming from. In the "old" days, 20 students walked into a room, sat down, and took a test in silence with pencil and paper while the instructor stood there. Now, 350 students go wherever they want, with classmates and many internet-connected devices around them, and take a test unmonitored. Sure, you tell them the exam can be open-note as long as the work alone, that's easy. But they can work together, and that's hard to detect unless they literally copy. The #1 problem is Chegg. They can screenshot and post the questions to Chegg and get answers back very quickly. And they do. To add to this, many schools have a large culture of cheating. Like > 10% of students or more will cheat on unproctored take-home tests. That 10-30% basically ruin exams for everyone, but most of all the instructor. You can't give people relaxed take-home exams, too many will cheat. You have to give a strict time limit. You have to put a ton of effort into making questions obscure or idiosyncratic, rather than just giving standard problems from years past. And remember you have 350 exams to grade, so you can't ask very deep questions. So I can't get that mad at my colleagues who use proctoring software. I can't really offer a reasonable alternative.
• fractal618 5y ago
  How is ProctorU different from Microsoft or Apple or Facebook?
• max002 5y ago
  Wow... People cheating their way through exams :D hopefully im not gonna ever hire one. Ive met ppl who said they go to interview, lie about their skills and say its 50/50... Usually get kicked out after their lack of knowledge surfaces in a month or two. Gods please save us from ppl who cheat on their IT certs and unis. And on top of that bragging about... 0mf gds, grow up.
• cobertos 5y ago
  Doesn't surprise me. Proctoring in general is pretty invasive. The last time I did a standardized test (GRE), I was pat down, tattoos photographed, led into a room with camera and a 24/7 human monitor just outside through a window, given industrial hearing protection (to prevent cheating ig?).
• max002 5y ago
  If your customer is loosing 10k per minute while you google basic linux command youre just being unprofessional dickhead.
• aaron695 5y ago
  All students cheat, at University we copied each other, did some hacking, snuck materials into exams, faked medical certificates, tapping pens in Morse code (This was more for fun) But ohhh I want to live in a remote world and I'm to stupid to understand what that entails. Lets just allow unfettered cheating? Are we all mentally ill? Yes we all cheat, but within limits. And with remote those limits need to be kept. And if you want to live in gaga land of remote, you will need to make sacrifices. You get to hold your comfort blanket in your bedroom, how much more babying do you need? Perhaps we need WeWork for doing exams, or hire-able laptops. But talk solutions. "In the Real world we have the internet", or "trust" students, what sort of toilet paper degrees are we handing out that people devalue University so much they think this shit is true?
• MarkMc 5y ago
  I run an online Javascript course and we have what I think is a better solution than ProctorU: 1. We don’t require the student to install any software - we use the video streaming feature of the browser on their laptop to record the student’s screen and webcam 2. We get the student to place their phone camera behind them at the 4 o’clock or 8 o’clock position with a view of the student’s desk, then we record the scene using the browser on the phone In this way we get 3 video feeds - the screen and two cameras - which we can monitor live and record. You might argue that this is still too creepy, but if we cannot see the student while they work it’s just too easy to cheat and that would make our credentials worthless.
• NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
  A company tried to get me to use a similar service as part of the interview process. Here's the ridiculous list of preparations they expected: ---- Keys to a successful Exam Day: Run the “Computer Requirements Check” at least a day before the appointment Disable your pop-up blocker Click “connect to proctor” to begin Be alone in room Have a clear desk and workspace Be connected to a power source Your mobile phone and headphones must be out of reach Have your government issued ID ready Be prepared to perform a room scan You must be in the webcam view throughout the exam. ---- Same dystopian bullshit. A room scan?! What business of theirs is the contents of my room? What if I live in a studio and it's my whole living space? (it is) Massive privacy invasion that is completely unnecessary. I told them no thanks. I don't need to pass a test like a college student with ~20 years of experience under my belt, which they knew.
  • torginus 5y ago
    What I generally don't understand is the stuff they're protecting against - god forbid you google how to do a regex replace in a string - is stuff you can just do on a regular boring workday.
• dusted 5y ago
  That's.. fcking insane. Dystopian has been worn thin.. This needs a whole new word, something with more punch. I guess criminal has also lost much of its luster.. Which generation is creating the ProctorU software? Who's determining its features? It can't be the "boomers" can it? Is it a GenY thing? This is so GenY!