How Honorlock Monitors Secondary Devices

2 min. readlast update: 10.17.2023

The most common incidents of academic dishonesty today relate to exam takers using a secondary device such as a phone, tablet, or laptop to search test questions and answers. There are multiple ways Honorlock is able to detect and discourage the use of secondary devices. 

Search & Destroy prevents answers from being leaked

  • Prevent cheating before it happens with Honorlock’s Search & Destroy feature 
  • This feature will automatically run on every exam to ensure questions are unique and not leaked onto cheating sites like Chegg and Quizlet 

Multi-Device Detection was developed to detect secondary devices. 

Here’s what happens when an exam taker does a search for a test question on a secondary device:

  • Honorlock will send an audible sound (we call it an audio watermark) through the secondary device that will be picked up through a proximity sensor through the exam taker’s microphone on the exam computer. This is an indicator that the exam taker is on a website they shouldn’t be on.
  • When this happens in production Honorlock will know what device the exam taker is using, what browser they are on, and what website they are attempting to obtain information from.
  • Honorlock captures a screen recording of the secondary device and the incident is available for review on the Honorlock dashboard.
  • We Flag when Exam Takers Access Cheating Sites with their Phones
    • Comments generated by an Honorlock proctor as part of a Live Pop-In incident are also available in real time. Videos are time-stamped to match the exam session. When a proctor observes suspected academic violations, they add a “violation” to prioritize the session for exam administrator review. 

Voice Detection

Honorlock creates a written transcript whenever a voice is detected. With our voice-detection technology, Honorlock creates a high-priority flag whenever words such as “Siri,” “Alexa,” “Cortana,” or “Google” are heard as well as any word from a dynamic list of words or phrases such as “help me,” “what’s the answer,” “cheat,” “question,” “answer,” and “copy.”

Apple Hand-Off Detection

  • Our AI detects the presence of the Apple Handoff Icon & proctors observe the session without intervening to determine if a phone is present and being used inappropriately
  • If the proctor determines that the student is using Apple Handoff, they prompt the exam taker to disable handoff to prevent further flags, and/or request a roomscan if they see a phone being used 
  • Visit this article for more information on Apple Hand-Off Detection

Was this article helpful?