#honorlock

OK SO HONORLOCK

in case you don’t know what honorlock, it’s an anti-cheating system that you download on the Chrome Web Store for online exams. you have to share your screen, share audio, and share your camera.

(check out its 1 star) my university required that all stats classes use honorlock for our midterm. so like a good noodle i am, i tried installing it after watching a “how to install” video that was required. come installation, for some reason, it wouldn’t install properly, so i was like... “okay, maybe i’ll just install it on my desktop instead of laptop...?” wouldn’t work on there either. so i contacted support, and they essentially they said i had to have all permissions for mic, camera, and audio output turned on for google chrome in order for honorlock to work...

so i check my permissions, and surprisingly, google chrome isn’t even there, even though normally i do have permissions turned on for some of my applications and sites. i contact them again, (and keep in mind, they’re trying their best to help me find a solution and are very quick at replying!) this time with screenshots, and they recommend i use an incognito window or to restart my laptop. i do both, and it doesn’t work. at this point, everytime i contact them, they’re just giving me the same recommendations again, so i give up with their help and turn to my discord friends for help. they walk me through their steps, as they had similar problems, and by some miracle, three freshmen university students were able to help me rather than professionally trained company-specific tech support. nice. 

i keep my discord voice channel on for moral support while taking this test because it’s only a practice test to see if this program works, and i’m the first one out of my group of friends to test it, so it’s like. lowkey terrifying. 

next, i’m about to start up my practice test, and so the program loads before i take the test. there are a series of prompts you have to go through before you can start the test: 

you have to show your face to the camera - ez pz, but i later found out that there’s some sort of algorithm that watches your eyes to read how many times you look off screen “to cheat.” which is interesting, considering this is a stats class and i need to use scratch paper. terrifying, considering that if i look away from my screen enough times, it’ll think i’m cheating when i’m not. 

you have to show your ID. if you con’t have your school ID, then your driver’s license or passport. uh. interesting. 

they require you to pick up your laptop and show them the room, to make sure there’s no way of cheating. imagine lifting up a desktop, which might be your only method of taking this test, to show them your room. uh. interesting to say the least. 

i think it’s quite odd, but i continue to take this test because, well, it’s a grade. but two questions in, the tech support chatbox pops up again, and this time, it puts my whole screen on lock, and i can’t click anywhere. this woman asks if i need any help. i did not contact tech support. i’m like, “no ???” and she’s like “okay, is there anything i can help you with?” and still i’m like... i just said no, but thanks...

and then it dawns on me.... my camera is on. my screen is being shared. my mic is on. my discord is on in the background. i type in the chatbox, “can you see me?????” because she can probably see me either directly through my camera or through the camera’s recording on my screen through the window. she types back, “yes.” INTERESTING. i don’t like how this random woman can suddenly see me and probably saw my ID too. can she hear me too? the answer is also yes, according to her after i asked. TERRIFYING. and i ask her next, “will you be here the entire time to watch me while i’m working on my stuff?” she explains to me that yes, she will be here just as a proctor, and then my recording will be further sent to my instructor so they can review it later. great. 

soon, i’m like. “ooooookay..... i think that’s all then. thank you.” she says great, then shuts down our chat and lets me get back to my practice test. i’m frazzled, and that was an INTERESTING encounter, to say the least. i finish the test as quickly as i can, and at the end, there’s an option to uninstall HonorLock from my device. i uninstall IMMEDIATELY and let my computer go through a scan to quarantine any malicious items. looks like i’m safe for now, but while that’s all going down, i talk to my discord. 

“could you guys hear me??? i couldn’t hear you guys; were you talking???” yes, apparently they WERE talking, but they couldn’t hear me and my 4 mental breakdowns while i was talking to that woman. INTERESTING. my friend doesn’t believe me, and so she takes her turn to do it. the rest of the discord voice channel and i carry on with our conversation (mostly just comforting me from the terror of honorlock that i just experienced). my friend comes back maybe thirty minutes later, saying that while she didn’t get a random woman popping up to answer any questions, she couldn’t hear us and we couldn’t hear her. proceed us going through the rest of our friend group testing out HonorLock.

I havent taken the test yet bc im still prepping but like.

Students Say Room Scans During Online Tests Are Invasive. Now a Judge Agrees.

2022-08-24 17:11:13 A federal district-court judge ruled on Monday that room scans — a component of many online-proctoring services — violate the Constitution. Judge J. Philip Calabrese of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio sided with the plaintiff in a ruling that’s been described by some legal observers as injecting a note of caution about the use of the controversial…