Yes — and your entire desktop, not just the exam tab. Proctortrack is among the most comprehensive proctoring systems in use because it doesn't confine itself to a lockdown browser. It installs a background desktop agent that keeps watching while the exam runs, and if you run it on a work or shared machine, that reach is worth understanding before you click accept.
The hiring-side parallel is any assessment platform that monitors locally — worth asking about explicitly, because most candidates assume "proctored" means "a camera on my face" and Proctortrack is proof it can mean much more.
What the desktop agent captures
In a full configuration, Proctortrack collects:
- Screen capture of the whole desktop — every monitor, every window, whether or not you were on the exam page.
- Webcam video and room audio for the session.
- Running-process inventory — the software list on your machine at exam time, including what gains focus.
- Network activity metadata in some deployments.
- An environment scan before the exam: a 360-degree webcam sweep of the room plus a look at your desk and sometimes walls.
- Identity verification, if enabled — photo comparison and ID checks.
Flags are generated from all of it: gaze leaving the screen, additional faces or voices, focus moving to an unexpected window, unknown processes appearing mid-session, anything visible on a second monitor. A human reviewer works the flagged moments afterward; there is no live proctor unless your institution added one.
The privacy conversation it forces
Because the agent records your desktop, personal notifications, documents, or tabs unrelated to the exam can end up in captured frames. The practical protections are procedural, not legal: run it on a clean machine if you can, close everything beforehand, log out of personal accounts, and check whether your institution permits exam-mode or kiosk-mode setups. If you're on a work-issued or family-shared computer, ask before installing — the agent requires real system-level permissions.
Keeping your session clean
- Pre-close every application, including messaging and anything with pop-up notifications. Process monitors can't tell Slack from a cheat tool.
- One monitor. A second screen is flagged as a second screen regardless of what's on it.
- Complete the environment scan fully and honestly; partial scans generate suspicion over nothing.
- Stay in frame, light your face, keep the desk bare of anything not permitted — the scan saw it, so don't introduce it later.
- Don't narrate your thinking aloud; audio flags trigger on speech.
If a flag goes against you, request the specific clip and explain the moment at that timestamp. Reviewers routinely dismiss flags once they see context — but that requires you to argue against the evidence, not around it.
For employers evaluating desktop-level proctoring
Understand what you're buying: full-desktop visibility produces enormous reviewer load and real candidate friction for a threat model that, in most hiring assessments, doesn't exist. Code-originality and consistency signals catch more cheating at interview and on-the-job stages than any capture layer does. Build monitoring only where a compliance requirement earns it, and let evaluation design — role-relevant tasks, structured scoring, defensible ranking — carry the decision quality instead. AI candidate evaluation covers that structure: turning assessment and screening signals into one ranked shortlist rather than disconnected gates. Whatever you enable, disclose the desktop agent specifically, not just "proctoring" — the install prompt is not informed consent.
Bottom line
Proctortrack records your full desktop — every screen and window — plus webcam, audio, process data, and a room scan, all flagged by software and reviewed by a human afterward. Use a clean machine, one monitor, zero background apps, complete the scan honestly, and contest wrongful flags clip by clip. And if the thought of a desktop agent on your computer bothers you, say so before installing — that conversation is exactly what disclosure is for.