Thanks Maria, As you might guess I'm not much of a coder, just an old croak fumbling along with new technology. But I've never trusted javascript in browsers. I don't know what it is doing and it seems like it could be anything. I'll wait and see if I get any reply from Coursera or any response from the forum. Nothing from anywhere yet. Moss
Hi,
On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 11:13 PM, Maurice McCarthy <moss@mythic-beasts.com> wrote:
But then they want to verify who you are and what do they want to do this? A photo from your webcam of yourself, a keyboard finger print to associate with you and a photo of a valid ID document such as a drivers license. The latter they promise to delete once they can see that you are you.
Here are 2 screen dumps of the tracking process as they explain it.
1. http://ubuntuone.com/3PBTfO0UENZO8yS8xvVqcF 2. http://ubuntuone.com/55qqbqJQkWXoIokhzVPY31
you should avoid that ubuntu stuff if you really care
1. Gathering the keyboard fingerprint presumable means running some arbitrary piece of code on my computer. This code is clearly a highly refined key-logger and therefore a grave threat to my personal and financial details. I would not submit to Signature Track with out the source code so that I can read, verify and compile it myself. Therefore may I have this code please?
if it's in a webbrowser, it's probably just javascript connected to an input field, not a full blown keylogger
2. How do I know you've deleted the photo of my drivers license?
you don't - there is no way to verify
3. In an age when personal details are saleable what reason do I have to trust the morality of the people behind Coursera and Signature Track?
one reason would be called pragmatism - who are we kidding, there are more people that just want that certificate than people that aren't willing to share information about themselves for it
I've posted these questions on the discussion forum of the course itself where the system automatically flagged it as 'unresolved' to the course lecturers and assistants who are, of course, all philosophers. Next week's lecture happens to be about morality.
sorry that they don't share your appreciation for related meta discussions
mbs