I'm so pissed off with StraighterLine. I just signed up for a bunch of classes a few weeks ago and now I find out that they decided to switch their policy to add proctoring and tacked on $30 extra on each of my classes after the fact. I won't ever use StraighterLine again and I will never agree to use ProctorU. I'm not pay extra for some random person access to my computer. There was another company like this that everyone thought was okay and later it was discovered that they were stealing pictures and files from the computer and pretending to disconnect while continuing to spy on customers.
Contactmail - you will be unaffected by the change. Nobody is going to get charged an extra $30 per course. In attempts to improve academic integrity StraighterLine will require any course purchased on or after November 1st to use proctoring for each course's final exam. This only affects courses purchased on or after November 1st, 2012. Pricing for the $99 subscription model currently requires a one-time $39 registration fee. It will raise to $49 to accommodate the cost. Pricing models for $399 a la carte and $999 Freshman year will see no pricing changes. CEO Burck Smith wrote a letter with the full announcement and details and can be viewed here: StraighterLine’s New Online Proctoring Policy | Burck Smith's CEO Corner
You are unaffected. Classes purchased after November 1st are the only ones that require the final exam to be proctored.
ProctorU is used by many state schools across the country. Straighterline is hardly a new customer of theirs. Its a little invasive, I admit but if you are ultra paranoid, create a VM and connect with that.