Signature Track

[Maurice McCarthy]

Hi

This is my first post here and I'm not sure if I'm in the right place. Anyhow, I
started a free online course the Introduction to Philosophy through coursera.org Now
I'm enjoying it so much I decided I want to give something back. The only way to do
this to buy a certificate for the course. Even though it is not particularly worth
anything this costs 50 to 100 dollars.

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

And from their faq:
https://www.coursera.org/signature/course/introphil/970720?utm_source=spark&utm_medium=banner

Q. How does typing pattern recognition work?
A.We will ask you to type a short phrase. Then we use the characteristics of your
unique typing pattern, such as the time (in milliseconds) between your keystrokes
and the duration you press a key down, to confirm your identity. Small typos and
minor day-to-day changes in your typing pattern are okay.


Somewhat disturbed by this tonight I wrote the follow requests to the them.

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?

2. How do I know you've deleted the photo of my drivers license?

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?


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.

Any one anything to say about this please?

Thanks in advance
Moss