Proctoring
Every proctoring setting is off by default, per assessment. You turn on what the role justifies, and the candidate is told what you turned on before they start.
What each setting does
| Setting | What it records | Candidate sees it |
|---|---|---|
| Fullscreen | Requires the assessment to run fullscreen; logs every exit | Yes — they are prompted to enter fullscreen |
| Tab switching detection | Logs each time the assessment tab loses focus | Yes — listed in the instructions |
| Copy protection | Blocks copy and paste inside the assessment | Yes — immediately, when it blocks them |
| Dual monitor detection | Logs when more than one display is attached | Yes — listed in the instructions |
| Screenshots | Periodic screen captures during the attempt | Yes — listed in the instructions |
| Geolocation | Approximate location, from a browser permission prompt | Yes — the browser asks explicitly |
Screenshot proctoring requires a Basic plan or above.
What proctoring is and is not
These signals are evidence for a person to interpret, not a verdict. Nothing here fails a candidate, flags them to you as a cheat, or changes their score. A tab switch appears in the attempt's log as a tab switch, with a timestamp, and that is all it means.
The reason to be careful is that the honest explanations are common. Tab focus is lost by a notification, a screen reader, an on-screen keyboard, or a laptop lid. A second display is a docked laptop. A geolocation refusal is a privacy-conscious candidate, not a proxy user. Treated as proof, these signals punish the wrong people — disproportionately candidates on borrowed hardware, shared spaces or assistive technology.
Choosing what to enable
A reasonable default for a professional hiring assessment is tab-switch detection and nothing else. It costs the candidate nothing, needs no permission prompt, and gives you a signal worth reviewing when a result looks anomalous.
Escalate from there only with a reason you could state out loud:
- Fullscreen makes the assessment harder to sit alongside documentation you may have intended to allow. It also interacts badly with screen magnifiers.
- Copy protection stops a candidate copying the question into their editor, which is a normal thing for a competent engineer to do.
- Screenshots capture whatever is on the screen, which may include things you have no business holding. They are a meaningful escalation and are stored under your retention window.
- Geolocation is a permission prompt that a candidate can simply refuse, and refusing tells you nothing.
Legal footing
You are the controller for candidate data collected through your assessments; we process it for you. Proctoring is personal data, some of it collected from someone's home. Enabling everything by reflex is not a neutral choice — it needs a basis you could defend to a candidate who asks, and to a regulator.
Two things the platform guarantees on your behalf, and which you should not try to work around:
- Candidates are told before they start. The privacy notice shown ahead of every assessment is generated from the settings you actually enabled — it cannot claim less than is collected.
- No automated decision is made. Proctoring signals never change a score, a status, or a candidate's progress. See Automated decisions.
Reviewing what was recorded
Proctoring events appear on the individual attempt in Results, as a timestamped log alongside the answers. Screenshots, if enabled, are attached to the same attempt.
All of it expires with the attempt under your account's retention window, and all of it is erased by a candidate data-deletion request — see Candidate data.