How Does Proctorio Work? What It Records and Flags

Reviewed and updated August 2026 against Proctorio’s published privacy policy and support documentation.

Almost every guide to Proctorio makes the same mistake: it lists a fixed set of things the software “does,” as though every exam everywhere behaves identically. That is not how Proctorio is sold or deployed. It is a configurable product, and the institution running your exam decides which parts are switched on.

That single fact answers most of the anxious questions people arrive with. Below is what the software is, what it can be configured to capture, who is allowed to look at it, and what a flag actually means.

What Proctorio actually is

Proctorio is remote proctoring software that plugs into the systems a school already uses. In its own words, it “integrates directly into an organization’s learning management system or assessment platform,” so exams are created, administered and taken in the same place as the rest of the coursework.

Practically, that means no separate portal and no second login. Proctorio describes itself as operating “in the background… without requiring separate logins, new portals, or changes to established processes.” For a student, a Proctorio exam looks like a normal LMS quiz with an extra startup step handled by the browser extension.

It is also worth knowing where Proctorio sits legally. When it proctors an exam, Proctorio is a data processor — your institution is the data controller. Proctorio is explicit that in those cases “the Institution controls your information, not Proctorio,” and points users to their own institution’s privacy policy. If you want to know exactly what was captured in your exam, your school is the correct place to ask — and they are obliged to be able to tell you, because they are the party that made the configuration decisions in the first place.

How Proctorio works during an exam

The flow is consistent even though the settings vary. You open the exam in your LMS. The Proctorio extension checks it is present and configured, runs whatever pre-exam checks the institution requires, and then the exam begins with the enabled options active for the duration. When you submit, the session — and whatever was captured — is handed to the institution.

Proctorio describes its platform as combining “AI-assisted analysis, secure exam delivery, and human oversight.” Those three pieces do different jobs: the delivery layer controls the exam environment, the analysis layer marks moments that look unusual, and the oversight layer is a person deciding whether any of it matters.

The three kinds of online proctoring

Knowing which model your exam uses tells you more than any feature list, because the three models fail in different directions. Proctorio can be deployed in more than one of them depending on what the institution bought.

Automated proctoring uses software to watch the session and mark anything that departs from the expected pattern. It is consistent and cheap to run across thousands of students, and it is the model most people mean when they say “AI proctoring.” Its weakness is context: it cannot tell the difference between looking away to think and looking away to read something, so it marks both and leaves the judgement to a person.

Live proctoring puts a human invigilator on the other end of your webcam and microphone during the exam. A live proctor can be distracted or miss things, but they can usually tell a cough, a housemate or a dropped connection apart from an attempt to cheat — the exact distinction automation struggles with.

Recorded review captures the session and has a reviewer watch it afterwards, often at speed, marking anything worth a closer look. Proctorio’s Professional Review Services sit in this category: authorised staff are given temporary access after the exam, typically within 48 hours.

What Proctorio records — and why it varies by school

This is the part that has no single answer, and any page telling you otherwise is guessing. Proctorio’s privacy policy refers to exam audio, video and screen recordings and images, but it consistently attaches the same condition: these are collected “if the Institution chooses to collect it.” The phrase appears repeatedly, and it is doing real work.

So the honest way to find out what applied to your exam is not to read a feature list — it is to check the exam instructions your instructor published, and your institution’s privacy notice. Those are the documents that describe your configuration.

One thing that does not vary is the protection on the data. Proctorio states that exam audio, video and screen recordings and images are encrypted with end-to-end encryption, and that once encrypted they “can only be decrypted by Institution-approved representatives.”

Who can actually watch your session

Access is narrower than most students assume, and it depends on which service the institution purchased. Proctorio’s documentation describes three situations:

• Institution-approved representatives — the people who hold the decryption keys. In practice, your instructor or an academic-integrity officer.
• Live Proctoring Services — where the institution uses them, Proctorio proctors “can review exam sessions… in real time.”
• Professional Review Services — the institution grants authorised Proctorio staff temporary access to review sessions, “typically within 48 hours after the exam session.”

Proctorio also notes it may have access to some of this data when providing live technical support to a test-taker during an exam — that is, when you ask for help mid-session. Outside those defined cases, the company states it does not profit from user data and that personal data cannot be “accessed, monetized, or reused beyond what is required to support the exam experience.”

A flag is not a verdict

If you have been told your exam was “flagged,” this is the most important section on this page. Automated proctoring marks moments that differ from the expected pattern. It does not conclude anything.

Proctorio itself frames the product this way. It says the platform provides “context, clarity, and just-in-time support so exam administrators can understand what occurred during an exam session and make informed decisions with confidence,” and — more directly — that Proctorio “supports assessment integrity by providing technology that informs human judgment rather than replacing it.”

Read plainly, that is the vendor saying the software is an input to a human process. Ordinary things generate flags: looking away to think, a housemate walking past, a delivery, poor lighting, a dropped connection, a noisy room. If you are asked about a flag, describing what was actually happening is a reasonable and often sufficient response, and your institution should have a written academic-integrity procedure with a right of reply.

This is the same pattern we found in Canvas’s documentation, where Instructure states outright that quiz logs “are not intended to validate academic integrity or identify cheating for a quiz.” Across the tools, the vendors are consistently more cautious about their own signals than the internet is. See what Canvas can and cannot detect for that breakdown.

If your Proctorio session was flagged: what happens next

The waiting is the worst part, so it helps to know the shape of the process. A flag goes to your institution, not to a Proctorio adjudicator. Someone with decryption access — normally your instructor or an academic-integrity officer — looks at the marked moments and decides whether there is anything to pursue. Many flagged sessions end there and the student never hears about it.

If you are contacted, a few things are worth doing calmly. Ask what specifically was flagged and at what timestamp, rather than responding to a general accusation. Ask which academic-integrity procedure is being followed; almost every institution has one in writing, with defined steps and a right of reply. Check your exam instructions for what was actually permitted — a calculator, scratch paper, a bathroom break — because a flag for a permitted action is not misconduct.

Then describe what was happening. Ordinary explanations are common and legitimate: a flatmate came in, a phone rang, the wifi dropped and the page reloaded, you read the question aloud, the room was dim. None of these are unusual, and none of them are cheating. Because the software is explicitly designed to inform a human decision rather than make one, an ordinary explanation is exactly the kind of input the process is built to receive.

If the matter becomes formal, your student handbook, a student union or advice service, and the dean of students office are the right places to go. You are entitled to know the allegation and to respond to it.

How Proctorio compares to other proctoring tools

Schools pick different tools, and the differences are real. The main distinction is whether a human is in the loop live, and whether the software locks your browser or merely watches it.

If your exam ran inside an LMS with no proctoring tool at all, none of the above applies and the only record is the platform’s own activity log — see Blackboard, ALEKS, or the full guide to online cheating detection.

Frequently asked questions

Does Proctorio record you the whole exam?

It depends on what your institution switched on. Proctorio’s privacy policy repeatedly qualifies exam audio, video and screen recording with the phrase “if the Institution chooses to collect it,” which means recording is a setting your school controls rather than a fixed behaviour of the software.

Can Proctorio see your whole computer?

Proctorio runs as a browser extension, so its reach is the browser and whatever screen-recording option the institution enabled for that exam. It is not a general-purpose monitoring agent watching your machine outside the exam session.

Who can watch a Proctorio recording?

Proctorio states that exam audio, video and screen recordings are protected with end-to-end encryption and “can only be decrypted by Institution-approved representatives.” Proctorio itself is a data processor; your institution is the data controller and sets the rules.

Does a Proctorio flag mean you failed or cheated?

No. Proctorio describes its role as providing “context, clarity, and just-in-time support so exam administrators can understand what occurred,” and says the technology “informs human judgment rather than replacing it.” A flag is an item for a human to look at, not a verdict.

Can Proctorio detect a phone or a second person in the room?

Only through whatever recording your institution enabled. If a webcam and microphone are being captured, unusual movement or a second voice can be flagged for review. If those options are off, there is nothing to flag from.

Do you need to install anything for Proctorio?

Proctorio integrates into your existing learning management system, so there is no separate portal or login. You do need the browser extension in place before a Proctorio-enabled exam.

How long before someone reviews a flagged session?

That depends on the service the institution bought. With Live Proctoring Services, proctors review sessions in real time. With Professional Review Services, Proctorio says authorised staff are given temporary access “typically within 48 hours after the exam session.”

Does Proctorio sell your data?

Proctorio states that it does not profit from user data and that assessment content and personal data cannot be “accessed, monetized, or reused beyond what is required to support the exam experience.”