With the shift to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, educators turned to remote exam proctoring software to support integrity for online tests. However, due to the mechanisms used to surveil test-takers, these systems come with significant privacy and security tradeoffs. At the height of the pandemic, Balash et al. (SOUPS ’21) found that test-takers had privacy concerns with remote proctoring but acquiesced due to a number of factors. We investigate how perceptions have changed four years later. To gain a fuller perspective on how users experience these tools now, we replicate Balash et al.’s study with 127 participants who have experienced exam proctoring. We found a significant shift in favor of proctoring software, with greater acceptance of all monitoring methods compared to 2020. This is likely due to the convenience of remote exams and a growing resignation to privacy trade-offs. We discuss these implications and suggest future directions.

COVID-19 caused an abrupt shift towards remote learning, and along with it, an increased adoption of remote, online proctoring technology to both dissuade and identify academic dishonesty (i.e., cheating). This shift also came with significant discontent from students who took to online platforms to both express their displeasure with remote proctoring and the methods they used for evading monitoring methods, essentially discussing _hacks_ to subvert the software and cheat on exams. In this paper, we seek to understand both the methods this online community shares for evading online proctoring and why they do so. Through qualitative analysis of social media videos (n=137) and comments (n=4,297) on YouTube and TikTok, we find both non-technical (e.g., sticky-notes) and deeply technical (e.g., custom virtual machines) methods of evading proctoring. The online videos, as well as the active comment sections, provide an important window into both an (unethical) desire to cheat but also the development of a security mindset. Many see proctoring software as invasive surveillance technology, and the discussion and sharing of methods to subvert it have similar tones to that of the hacker/tinkerer communities who also seek to share their experiences of subverting technology, for fun and profit. We conclude with lessons for the security and privacy community about evading online exam proctoring, as well as a conversation about fairness and equity in proctoring design.