Canadian universities using invasive spyware "Proctortrack" to monitor students during exams. Includes: facial recognition, room scans, knuckle scans

[Ernspiker76]

----------------------------------------------

Summary

Due to the ongoing situation created by the covid-19 pandemic, universities across Canada have chosen to hold classes, labs, and exams online. To combat potential cheating during exams universities across the country have chosen Proctortrack to monitor students during exams. Using this method to combat cheating has raised numerous privacy concerns due to the methods that the software uses. The methods that the software uses to surveilled students are webcam and audio recording, keystrokes, screen capture, all applications or process running, hardware devices connected, facial recognition, eye movements, and knuckle scanning. After completing your exam all information that has been collected is uploaded to Proctortrack's servers for the professor or TA to view as needed. It is not specified by Protortrack how long the data is kept on their servers only saying on their website “it will be purged in accordance with the data retention policy to which your institution agreed”.

 

Quotes

 

 

"Proctortrack then monitors the visual and audio feed from the student’s computer through the rest of their exam to make sure they are not doing things like looking away from the computer screen, leaving the room, having someone from outside the room shouting answers to them, or having someone else enter their room."

 

"Of course, this concerns many students, particularly with the threat, “if your computer setup does not meet these specifications [required to run Proctortrack] then you should withdraw from this course and speak with an Academic Advisor from your faculty or college for advice on other courses you could take” posted on some syllabi in different classes."

 

"Wotherspoon was also concerned about how some professors were treating parents who had kids at home. “At home, the complication for me is I can’t set aside three hours to an exam without looking away from the screen. Just in a one-hour class, I have had to look away three times just to do little things like finding a shoe or stop the dog barking.” When she voiced her concerns to her professor the response she got was “It’s like any exam, you can’t leave the exam room.” And she was told to “get childcare”."

 

My thoughts

 

In my opinion, there are numerous other ways to combat academic misconduct without forcing students to install spyware on their computer i.e. open book exams but the questions are much harder, making the exams longer without increasing the time limit to not allow enough time to cheat, or writing original exams that do not use textbook questions (which answers are easily available for). I do have a big problem with students cheating on exams but I think this problem should be solved in less intrusive ways. You aren't allowed to look away from your computer screen without the software flagging you for cheating, which during a 3-hour exam will be nearly impossible. You won't be able to go to the washroom or get a glass of water during your exam either, all of which are allowed during in-person examinations. On top of that, if you do not consent to be surveilled in this way you are told to drop the class, which if you are trying to follow an academic plan is appalling. The biggest concern is that we have no idea where this data is going or what it will be used for in the future. One student in the article but it this way, “If you have test data for 100,000 students and you decide to say, racially profile those students and break them into what patterns are visible in different ethnicities you could very easily develop tests and exercises that would perhaps favour a certain kind of profile of person. Say Proctortrack partners with Pearson, who is a large, unethical educational institution testing company that issues standardized tests and assessments.… We’re literally paying to build a database of info on us to be used for unknown purposes later.”. 

 

Sources

 http://www.carillonregina.com/online-proctoring-software-is-invasive-intrusive-untested/  (all quotes taken from here)

https://regina.ctvnews.ca/it-s-invasive-u-of-r-student-raising-privacy-concerns-about-new-exam-monitoring-software-1.5101673

[SolarNova]

So all a student needs to have is a desktop PC and not buy a Mic or Webcam.

Oh and use a separate laptop for 'cheating'.

 

Have to have a webcam ? Oops i bought a poor quality one and my internet connection is bad (vaseline on the lens)

Why are u looking away ?  Im not, i have an ultra wide display

 

I mean come on , if a student wants to cheat ,, being able to do an exam from home is the best thing to happen to them lol.

[jaslion]

School did similar stuff here too but was not allowed to make us install any sort of this software due to gdpr but did make it so that they had a face tracker on the teams meetings and were crazy strict about it all. We had to do a test exam and of the 127 students that took part only 3 were allowed to hand in the test as we were all found cheating by the monitoring tools part from those 3. I stopped enrolling there due to basically the teachers bailing after corona week 2 and no longer teaching (one booked it to Turkey and everyone was failing in the class as we did not get the assignments we were supposed to hand in, got a half updated course or got the old stuff from 2 years ago that wasn't what we were supposed to learn).

 

In the end my classmates cheated on basically every test as there was no other way to really do the exam due to lack of teaching and straight up lacking the neccesary information to learn and perform the tasks on the exam. 2 people passed (ones that were redoing the year mostly with the help of a lot of cheating). Currently there are no first year students that are entering the second year as everyone bailed + a nice big lawsuit.

 

All in all the cheating ended up being very easy. Vm your instance that you do the exam in and done. You have your whole desktop to look around for all the stuff. That and the mute your mic when having someone behind the computer that is watching your vm with a screenshare look for the answers. Even then we only had 2 people pass with all that stuff going on (only 2 got caught cheating of the 58 people that did the exams).

 

Schools really should put more effort into accomodating to their students as no a single student is alike.

[wanderingfool2]

Honestly, I don't think that this option is that bad.  I think there should be an option to take the test in person though (as an alternative).

 

There should also be cell-phone jammers in test halls (but usually not, as it would typically require a specialized exemption...owning a jammer here is illegal, and using it is as well unless special permission is made).

 

While there is a privacy aspect to this, the other side of the coin is the rampant cheating that is going on in some of the schools.  [The course I went through is a good example where a class was getting the quiz assignments before and distributing it amoungst themselves, they eventually got caught as a TA had added an additional comment in the source code that wasn't present when everyone submitted there results.  The students that cheated made up to close to 25% to the class].  Academic fraud is a real thing, with not really serious consequences when caught usually...so I am happy that at least a school is taking it more seriously.

 

34 minutes ago, Ernspiker76 said:

In my opinion, there are numerous other ways to combat academic misconduct without forcing students to install spyware on their computer

I've seen professors and such attempt doing some of your mitigations, but the fact is sitting at home unmonitored it will become a lot easier to cheat.  (e.g. paying someone smarter to do the test and just copying the answers)

[Trik'Stari]

Am I the only one confident that someone will still find a way to cheat the system?

 

Hide a webcam to film your screen, post the questions online, people can memorize the answers? Or try to, anyways.

[TetraSky]

Massive invasion of privacy is what it is.

 

Yes, it's an exam. But you're at home, not in a class. You have responsibilities there. Kids, family, animals. If someone rings the door bell, if the phone rings, if you need to take a shit, if an emergency happens... You're just supposed to ignore everything and concentrate on the exam only? Get real!

Just during an online class this month for college, my fire alarm went off. It was a pain to listen to the teacher with an alarm blaring in my ears from the constant false alarms in this fucking building... But I still gotta check to see if it's legit or not (That time, they were actually testing the system... the alarm went off every few minutes, FOR HOURS...).

 

If it was during an exam, I should've just ignored it and potentially burn with the building? What the fuck is wrong with these people. 

 

Personally, for college, we're not required to have a webcam (yet anyway).

But if they decide I need a special software other than Microsoft Teams and need a webcam to be on during the entirety of the exam... I don't know what I'll do. I don't want to install what is essentially spyware (Virtual machine ftw? Or use Linux... I highly doubt whatever crap they come up with works with anything other than Windows anyway).

 

Also, what does that say for people who can't afford the internet connection needed to stream webcam? (and all the other garbage their software is collecting)

Not rare these days for younger people to only have their phone and a phone plan, without a home internet connection or laptop/desktop (there's at least 3 of them in my classes this year, they usually go to a cafe/restaurant with free wifi for their classes... Imagine for an exam). Imagine streaming a 3 hour exam from your phone. Not only the internet connection is to be considered, but the battery life, too.... With older devices more so.

 

 

Edit : Got my first "online test" today (18 of september)... Had to have the webcam on. But no extra software. It didn't need to look at my hands or anything like that either. Honestly I'm not even sure why the teacher wanted us all to open the webcam, served next to no purpose.

[CarlBar]

57 minutes ago, Ernspiker76 said:

And she was told to “get childcare”."

 

This is the bit that caught my eye. It's one thing to want to record in detail stuff about the exams, but the whole reason this isn't happening in a nice neat exam room is a global pandemic, and that makes comments like this inherently idiotic because the same factors that make having the exam in an exam room impossible make getting simple childcare even harder. It also means it's going to be much harder to remove other distractions than normal. The lack of any kind of acknowledgement of this is just stupid. Which rams home the point that they need to take a fundamentally different approach to exams this time around.

 

Personally when i was at high school and college the exam structure was poor at best and downright toxic at worst to actual learning. The old teaching to the test problem. So it's not really surprising things are falling apart.

[Nathanpete]

A VM with pass throughs of fake (virtualized) webcams and mics would kill this. They would have to manually review to see if it is fake, and some kid who is failing one class but it a genius in these sort of things could cheat on a laptop and pass every exam by doing very simple fake low-bitrate webcam footage and a muffled audio stream to fake whatever dumbass AI they have analyzing this footage. 

 

Can be DQed if you did install the spyware... on a Linux VM. 

 

Anyway this is a big no no and will result in the unfair failures of a majority of students, on top of all the other failures of the education system brought on by digital learning. 

 

I am actually writing this on a school-appointed chromebook filled with side-loaded spyware extensions banned from the chrome web store for privacy reasons. (Don't ask why I don't have other devices, it is a very long story that hopefully will be changing soon)

But none of them have actually gotten me in trouble. The only time I got in serious trouble was when they linked my chromebook to an IP address that was using a ton of bandwidth on the school's (surprisingly fast for the area) network bc I was ripping + downloading youtube videos to circumvent the block on yt content. I would simply go to one of my favorite youtuber's socialblade's, go to the "user's videos" tab, copy a hyperlink and paste this into a youtube-to-mp4 site and watch offline. 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

3 minutes ago, Nathanpete said:

I am actually writing this on a school-appointed chromebook filled with side-loaded spyware extensions banned from the chrome web store for privacy reasons. (Don't ask why I don't have other devices, it is a very long story that hopefully will be changing soon)

But none of them have actually gotten me in trouble. The only time I got in serious trouble was when they linked my chromebook to an IP address that was using a ton of bandwidth on the school's (surprisingly fast for the area) network bc I was ripping + downloading youtube videos to circumvent the block on yt content. I would simply go to one of my favorite youtuber's socialblade's, go to the "user's videos" tab, copy a hyperlink and paste this into a youtube-to-mp4 site and watch offline. 

My schools Chromebook spyware auto installed on my home one. Its fun.

[AlwaysWong]

Where are all those data going to who? This is too much to me. I skip my college classes this year. My college still charge full tuition for online like really? 

[COTG]

we've been using proctorio and its a fucking nightmare. I couldnt even go to the bathroom during my summer exams because we were not allowed to "move". fucking lunatics 

[DeScruff]

I can think of 100 different ways to get around all of these.
I mean you can't listen to a Mic, or looks at a webcamera if there are no Mics or webcameras. -If you have a desktop, unplug em, if you have a laptop disable them, or even uninstall their drivers.
 

If they are required... Troll the frig outa them - get the cheapest shittiest mic or webcamera. Max out the gain to the point it just peaks anytime you make the slightest sound. (or do the inverse so its impossible to hear you)
Attach your mic to a fan or AC unit.
Webcamera? Sit with your back to a window make sure the camera just gets overwelmed. or put a dollar store "magnifying glass" right infront of the web camera.

"Sorry thats just how it is at my home!"

[SansVarnic]

-= Topic Cleaned =-

 

Saying "Not to get to political" and then proceeding to derail a topic into political and covid discussion.

Politics is not allowed. There is a dedicated Covid thread. Follow the rules.

[Quinnell]

2 hours ago, COTG said:

we've been using proctorio and its a fucking nightmare. I couldnt even go to the bathroom during my summer exams because we were not allowed to "move". fucking lunatics 

Man I am so glad I am out of college.  This kind of crap is ridiculous.  There are less draconian ways of making your exams relatively 'secure.'  

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Current student at Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, BC, CAN) and I can confirm that for this very reason, many professors have been trying to move away from holding exams. Our Computing Science department does use an in-house built learning management system which does support quizzes. It simply requires students to take a photo of themselves prior to submission as its anti-cheat measure. All servers for that learning management system are located on campus so privacy concerns are for the most part non-existent with this approach. So many Computer Science professors have been using that instead. Instructors from other departments have been solely relying on assigning more papers, assignments, and group projects to make up for the lack of examinations. Student vigilantism has also been a key contributor to the relative success we've had without the use of proctoring software. In one of our classes last semester, we were able to rat out someone who has been offering bounties online for people to complete coding assignments on their behalf. The person didn't do a good job hiding the fact as they essentially just copied and pasted the entire assignment description. Nice job. 

[Eaglerino]

19 minutes ago, comander said:

Just make the exams harder and make them open everything. 

 

Have 3x the questions as normal and shuffle them. 

 

 

Main issue with this is garbage, sell-answers websites like chegg/course hero will get the answers and there goes your test integrity.

 

Arizona State University among other decent, online colleges in USA have been using one called RPNow for years which makes you go through similar checks. Don't really see how it's different than sitting in a classroom... it's not a difficult concept to section away part of your living area only for test taking. and you can't use the restroom when you take a test in a real classroom either

[thorhammerz]

48 minutes ago, Eaglerino said:

and you can't use the restroom when you take a test in a real classroom either

From what I remember several years back, the Canadian university I went to did allow restroom access during exams, but a proctor had to accompany you.

[FakeNSA]

1 hour ago, Eaglerino said:

Main issue with this is garbage, sell-answers websites like chegg/course hero will get the answers and there goes your test integrity.

 

Arizona State University among other decent, online colleges in USA have been using one called RPNow for years which makes you go through similar checks. Don't really see how it's different than sitting in a classroom... it's not a difficult concept to section away part of your living area only for test taking. and you can't use the restroom when you take a test in a real classroom either

Fellow ASU student?

But back on topic, yeah. While from a privacy perspective this sucks, it was also normal for me last year, before "the covid shift". While the 3 hour test seems unreasonable (give the option to divide it, so students can take care of kids?) the rest of it is pretty average.

[Ernspiker76]

3 hours ago, DeScruff said:

I can think of 100 different ways to get around all of these.
I mean you can't listen to a Mic, or looks at a webcamera if there are no Mics or webcameras. -If you have a desktop, unplug em, if you have a laptop disable them, or even uninstall their drivers.
 

If they are required... Troll the frig outa them - get the cheapest shittiest mic or webcamera. Max out the gain to the point it just peaks anytime you make the slightest sound. (or do the inverse so its impossible to hear you)
Attach your mic to a fan or AC unit.
Webcamera? Sit with your back to a window make sure the camera just gets overwelmed. or put a dollar store "magnifying glass" right infront of the web camera.

"Sorry thats just how it is at my home!"

Unfortunately from my understanding proctortrack has thought of a lot of these work arounds and will flag you or not even allow you to attempt the examination if your camera is not at least 600x800, the camera is unable to scan your face at any time during the exam, loud mic inputs, insufficient environment lighting, and any unauthorized software running. 

 

Also worth noting is what Proctortrack thinks might constitute cheating. Pulled directly from their website

https://www.proctortrack.com/students/how-it-works-students/

 

Proctortrack does not decide whether a student has cheated or not. The software records webcam, microphone, desktop, and keyboard feed and then uses algorithms to decide which behaviors are abnormal. The abnormal behavior is then highlighted for professors to review.  Following behaviors are declared as cheating depends on the university's academic integrity policy.

 

Rules vary by school, but the default exam terms are as follows:

 

• Do not cheat or attempt to deceive during the examination session.
• Do not impersonate another candidate or have another person impersonate you.
• Do not use any mobile device to talk or communicate to anyone via the use of any manual or electronic medium.
• Do not leave the view of your webcam during the test.
• Do not photograph, print, or take a screenshot of any part of the test via any medium.
• Do not eat or drink during the exam period.
• Do not let others access your secured test or computer.
• Do take tests in a busy area. Students may be disqualified if they are disturbed by others during test-taking.
• Do not leave open any other software or web page that is not required for taking the test.*
• Do not use multiple monitors, keyboards or mice.
• Do not look off-screen to read notes.*
• Do not make notes or calculations on your computer or on paper, unless test instructions explicitly state to do so.

 

*Unless the test configuration set by the Instructor allows you to do so.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

I think at this point, professors are just worried of people who are writing exams on behalf of students. All of the exams I had last semester which was all online were made open book by the instructor. The same thing happened with the semester before it as it switched to online learning for the latter half due to COVID restrictions. Provided that instructors are careful and don't use the same exam papers, cheating is not really a viable strategy to achieve good grades. The amount of time wasted looking for answers and referencing textbooks and notes is enormous. If the people who legitimately studied can barely finish the exam on time, what are the odds of someone who literally doesn't know anything and is trying to cheat their way through to finish? Not that high. In fact, one of my instructors have stated that if you are planning to look up everything during the exam, you're not going to even finish half of the exam in the allotted time. 

[PCGuy_5960]

10 minutes ago, Ernspiker76 said:

Unfortunately from my understanding proctortrack has thought of a lot of these work arounds and will flag you or not even allow you to attempt the examination if your camera is not at least 600x800, the camera is unable to scan your face at any time during the exam, loud mic inputs, insufficient environment lighting, and any unauthorized software running. 

That seems like bullshit? So if someone lives in a crowded place, he can't participate in the exam? Or what if someone has a really old webcam with shit quality? And you could easily get around the unauthorized software thing by using the software in a virtual machine.

[Ernspiker76]

If your computer does not meet the specs outlined by proctortrack then my university has said you either drop the class, upgrade your hardware to the required specs or fail your examination. 

(specs detailed in pictures) 

 

You also must prepare your exam environment to meet proctortrack's standards. This includes Turing off all noise making devices and setting up in an area where other people will not talk to you or walk behind you.

 

So people writing in noisy or crowded environments are out of luck.

https://verificient.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/1000165250-how-do-i-prepare-my-testing-environment-

 

 

They even want you to go as far as disabling your extra monitors if you have more than 1.

https://verificient.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/1000286673-multiple-monitor-windows

 

From their "how it works page" 

Robust Application-Based Solution

Proctortrack prevents blacklisted keystrokes and applications, continuously scans hardware and peripherals to detect virtual machines and other restricted devices, and flags attempts to search the web for answers

 

So maybe using a VM won't work, depending on how they do the detection. 

 

https://www.proctortrack.com/instructors/how-it-works-instructors/

 

 

 

42 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

That seems like bullshit? So if someone lives in a crowded place, he can't participate in the exam? Or what if someone has a really old webcam with shit quality? And you could easily get around the unauthorized software thing by using the software in a virtual machine.

 

42 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

That seems like bullshit? So if someone lives in a crowded place, he can't participate in the exam? Or what if someone has a really old webcam with shit quality? And you could easily get around the unauthorized software thing by using the software in a virtual machine.

[PCGuy_5960]

2 minutes ago, Ernspiker76 said:

-snip-

My point was that this seems like a pointless violation of privacy that could lead to innocent students getting disqualified for no reason. What if a student can't afford better hardware or lives in a crowded place? They have no choice but to fail the exam. And on the other hand what prevents a student who has more hardware available to just set up a second PC and cheat with that through a second monitor/splitting one monitor? 

[Master Disaster]

8 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

Am I the only one confident that someone will still find a way to cheat the system?

 

Hide a webcam to film your screen, post the questions online, people can memorize the answers? Or try to, anyways.

I can already think of a way, run the exam computer in a virtual machine with the monitoring software running in the VM and it would be impossible for them to distinguish between the user doing things on the VM or doing them on the host. The eye tracker would see them looking at the screen, the keylogger would only capture from inside the VM, the only audio would be typing and you can easily get a small rubber keyboard hidden out of view somewhere. Using VMWare its possible to edit XML files to remove all trace that the PC is a virtual machine and you can even rename devices in device manager fairly easily so non of the hardware says anything about VM, VMWare or Virtual Hardware.

 

You could literally cheat to your hearts content right in front of them, while they're recording and they would never know.

 

Edit - Heres how you do it without even having to move your hands from the mouse and keyboard.. Set up the VM, on the host you tell Windows to capture screenshots directly to a file in the the Pictures folder, you have the hosts pictures folder shared with a friend in another room and a chat app running on the host connected to same friend.

 

The question comes up, you hit print screen on the host, screenshot gets saved to pictures, friend opens it, googles it, writes answer in chat to host, take answer from host and type it into VM.

[Sauron]

That's so stupid. Students could always cheat, even in person, if they really wanted to.