Invasive proctoring services overstep student privacy
When schools were forced to navigate online learning, many signed contracts with online proctoring services.
These proctoring services like ProctorU, Proctorio, Examity, Honorlock and Respondus LockDown force students to sacrifice their privacy for their education; gaining access to the user’s camera, microphone, computer screens and more.
Some of these companies use live proctors that monitor the test-taker’s every movement and other companies use software equipped with facial recognition and/or eye movement tracking.
The Chief Executive of Proctorio, Mike Olson, stated, “I shouldn’t be happy … We’ll probably increase our value by four to five times just this year.”
David Smetters, CEO of Respondus, stated that between 2019 and 2020, the company has grown four times over.
ProctorU shares a plethora of student data with educators, including their home address, work, parental, and citizenship status, medical records and biometric data. They even said that they “share test-takers’ browsing history, searches, and online interactions,” with a group of hidden website analytic providers.
The company’s chief executive, Scott McFarland, states that ProctorU does not share information with third parties, but student data is shared and retained for “as long as necessary.”
Bill Fitzgerald, researcher of education technology for Consumer Reports, stated, “These platforms exist because they are selling a narrative that students can’t be trusted. … The people who have the most to lose here are the students, and they’re the farthest away from the decision. … Students are paying tens of thousands of dollars to have their higher-ed institutions sell them out.”
Chancellor Sandra Jordan confirmed that the UofSC system has had a contract with Respondus since before the coronavirus outbreak and that some mathematics professors use ProctorU.
Students are paying for these services with their tuition, and Respondus is the cheapest one. Dr. Jordan emphasized that “these tools [are] an option, not a requirement,” at USC Aiken.
Overall, students are being monitored by invasive software or complete strangers, giving companies access to vast amounts of personal information that is stored for an unknown amount of time.
Students are indirectly paying for technology that monitors them while educators are caught in the narrative that assumes students' guilt, a narrative these companies created for the sole purpose of stuffing their own pockets.
