Before You Let an Assessment Record Your Screen or Your Face

What Does Proctoring Actually Capture?

Most proctoring tools watch a narrow set of signals: gaze direction, audio in the room, and whether the browser window loses focus. Nearly all of what those signals catch has an innocent explanation: a second monitor, a notification, someone talking in the next room. The honest thing to say about them is exactly that rather than a script for avoiding them.

What gets flagged and what gets scored are two different things, and it's worth keeping them separate in your head. A flag is a note for a human reviewer to look at, not an automatic verdict, and how much AI assistance you used is not one of the things being measured at all in a well-designed assessment. The signal worth caring about is whether the tool distinguishes a flag from a conclusion, which is a fair question to ask before you agree to anything.

Ask Four Questions Before Clicking Agree

None of this needs research done days ahead of time. A short list, answerable out loud in the minutes before the assessment opens, covers the ground that actually matters and takes less time than reading the consent screen itself usually does:

• Is it the assignment tab, or the full desktop and every window on it?
• Does it create a face template, or just a plain video recording?
• If a template is created, who holds it, and how long is it kept?
• Is the audio on its own switch, separate from the video?

None of these are unusual or confrontational to ask. A recruiter fielding them for the first time is a signal worth noticing on its own, and one who answers immediately and specifically usually means the process behind the tool was actually thought through before it reached you.

Know When It's Biometric Data, Not Just a Recording

A face template is a narrower, more regulated category of data than an ordinary recording, and it carries its own rules in a handful of states. Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act requires a written release after written notice before a face geometry scan or similar identifier is collected, and it requires the collector to publish a retention schedule and destroy the data once its purpose is satisfied or within three years of your last interaction, whichever comes first ¹.

Maryland goes further for interviews specifically: an employer there can't use facial recognition to create a face template during a job interview unless you sign a waiver naming the date, your consent, and whether you read it ². Neither state's rule stops an employer from declining to interview someone who refuses to sign, so the practical value of the right is knowing about it and asking, not a guaranteed path around the tool.

A screen recording or a plain webcam video, without a template built from it, generally sits outside these particular rules, which is exactly why the first question in the list above matters: template or no template changes which law, if any, actually applies. A related but distinct case is worth naming too: if the assessment is a recorded video answer that an AI program specifically analyzes, rather than a live proctored work sample, Illinois has a separate consent requirement for that too, aimed at the video interview itself rather than the biometric template question ³.

Two More States Add the Same Kind of Rule

Illinois and Maryland aren't the only two. Texas requires informing you and getting consent before capturing a biometric identifier like face geometry for a commercial purpose, and it puts a hard outer limit on how long the identifier can be kept: destroyed within a reasonable time, and no later than the first anniversary of the date the purpose for collecting it expires ⁵.

Washington takes a lighter-touch version of the same idea, requiring notice, consent, or a mechanism preventing later commercial use before a biometric identifier is enrolled in a database for a commercial purpose, without prescribing exactly what the notice has to say ⁶.

The pattern across all four states is the same even where the details differ: a face template triggers a separate legal category from an ordinary recording, with its own notice, consent, and retention rules attached specifically to it. None of the four laws stops an employer from declining to move you forward if you decline the template, and each one is tied to its own state, so the honest first step is still figuring out whether any of them covers your situation at all before assuming a right you may not actually have.

Spend Five Minutes Before It Starts

A short list that costs nothing and addresses the exposure a full-desktop share creates on a personal machine: sign out of accounts you don't need open, silence notifications, close the second monitor or anything on it, and consider a separate browser profile so only the assessment tab is visible if the capture is broader than you'd like.

If something about the format itself is the barrier rather than what it captures, a disability accommodation request is a separate and standing right, not a favor: the ADA bars a covered employer from failing to make a reasonable accommodation for a qualified applicant, absent undue hardship, and a request can be made before an assessment starts rather than after something goes wrong during it ⁴. What an employer is actually told to disclose before recording a candidate's screen covers the same ground from the other side of the table, and it's a useful check on whether what you were told matches what a well-run process is supposed to offer. If the assessment also asks for your AI chat log alongside the recording, that's a related question with its own honest answer worth reading before you sit down.

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