Edward Ongweso Jr. reports:
On Friday, digital rights group Fight for the Future unveiled an open letter signed by 2,000 parents calling on McGraw-Hill Publishing to end its relationship with Proctorio, one of many proctoring apps that offers services that digital rights groups have called “indistinguishable from spyware.”
Proctorio has managed to quickly get itself a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad reputation in the privacy community. With restraint, Ongweso reports:
Proctorio is one of a few companies that has come under scrutiny from privacy groups not only for invasive surveillance, but exhaustive data extraction that collects sensitive student data including biometrics. The company is perhaps unique in its attempts to silence critics of its surveillance programs. Proctorio has deployed lawsuits to silence critics, forcing one University of British Columbia learning technology specialist to exhaust his personal and emergency savings due to a lawsuit meant to silence his online criticisms of the company. Proctorio has also targeted students and abused Twitter’s DMCA takedown process to further suppress valid criticisms of its proctoring software.
Read more on Vice. Readers interested in the controversies swirling around Proctorio may also wish to read Akash Satheessan (@oxylibrium’s) analysis of what he describes as a zero-knowledge encryption flaw.