Guide
Proctoring software is sold as if it prevents cheating. It does not. What it does is produce signals, and the useful question is which signals you get, how reliable they are, and what decision you are entitled to make from them.
A focus-loss event says the exam surface stopped being the active window. It does not say why. A notification stealing focus, an accessibility tool, a flaky trackpad, and a deliberate search in another tab all look identical in the log.
This is why the count matters more than any single event, and why patterns matter more than counts. Four focus losses in a two-hour paper is noise. Twenty-two, each two to six seconds long, each immediately before an answer changes, is a pattern worth a conversation.
The failure mode to avoid is treating the log as a verdict. Automated action is reasonable for gross cases — a threshold that force-submits after a large number of violations — but a borderline count should route to a person, not to a rejection email.
A second device is invisible to browser-level monitoring, and largely invisible to a webcam pointed at a face. So is a person off-camera. Any claim to prevent cheating outright is a claim about a room, and software running in a browser tab is not in the room.
The honest framing is deterrence plus evidence. Candidates who know signals are collected behave differently, and when something does go wrong you have a record to reason about.
Say what is collected, what the threshold does, and what happens if it is crossed — before the attempt starts, not in a terms page. Candidates who understand the rules trip fewer signals accidentally, and a documented disclosure is what makes a later decision defensible.
No. It deters, and it produces evidence. A second device or another person in the room is beyond what any browser-based or camera-based check can see, so treat proctoring as an input to a human judgement rather than as prevention.
On its own, usually not. It is proportionate for practice and mock tests and for a first hiring screen. For certification or a final exam, add a supervised live session, an invigilated room, or recorded proctoring with a documented review process.
Tab switch, window blur, fullscreen exit, copy, paste, right-click, and developer-tools open, plus a running violation count. Past a threshold you configure, the runtime can warn, force-submit, or ban. There is no webcam or screen recording.
More answers on the full FAQ.