Only if the employer switched it on. Webcam proctoring is a checkbox in the panel a recruiter fills in when they build a HackerEarth assessment, and a test sent out with that box unticked never asks for your camera at all. Where it is ticked, the browser prompts for camera access before the timer starts, HackerEarth samples still snapshots at intervals rather than filming you continuously, and a small live thumbnail of your own feed sits in a corner of the test window for the rest of the session.
That thumbnail is why this question gets typed so often. It is a local preview of what is being sampled, drawn by your own browser, and it looks far more like a video call than a photo booth. Its presence does not mean a continuous stream is leaving your machine, and its absence does not prove that nothing is being monitored, because the other settings in the stack are much quieter about themselves.
The proctoring stack, one toggle at a time
Four separate settings get collapsed into the single word "proctoring". They are configured independently, they leave different artefacts in the recruiter's report, and one HackerEarth test can carry any combination of them, including none.
| Toggle | What it actually captures | What you see as the candidate | Who turns it on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Periodic webcam snapshots | Still images of whoever sits in the camera's cone, sampled at intervals across the session rather than recorded as one continuous video. They land in the report as a timestamped gallery a reviewer scrolls. | An explicit browser permission prompt before the clock, then the small live thumbnail of your own feed pinned in a corner of the test window until you submit. | The employer, per assessment. Off on plenty of short screening tests. |
| Face-motion liveness prompt | Evidence that a live person is at the machine rather than a printed photo or a still image held in front of the lens. It gates entry rather than watching you afterwards. | A short blocking setup screen that asks you to move before it lets you continue. The specific gesture varies by configuration, so expect some movement rather than one fixed script. A dim room is the usual reason it loops. | The employer, and in practice it travels with the snapshot setting rather than being picked on its own. |
| Government-ID upload | A photo of an identity document, uploaded or held up to the webcam, filed against the session so the score attaches to a named person. Some flows capture a face photo at the same moment for comparison. | A one-time screen before the assessment opens. It never reappears mid-test, and you cannot start without finishing it. | The employer. Common on hiring drives and campus rounds, unusual on a quick screening round. |
| Tab-switch and focus logging | That the test window lost focus, at what timestamp, for how long, and how many times. It records the leaving, not the destination. It cannot name the application you opened, read another tab, or see a second monitor. | Usually an on-screen warning the moment focus returns, often with a running count. Many configurations also push the test full screen and warn each time you exit it. | The employer, and this is the toggle most often left on when the camera ones are off, because it needs no permission and costs the candidate no setup time. |
Sitting alongside those, and not visible from the candidate side in any meaningful way, are the checks that need no permission at all: copy and paste restrictions inside the editor, and similarity comparison of your submitted code against other candidates and against public sources. They generate no prompt, no thumbnail and no warning banner, which is exactly why people forget them while worrying about the camera.
How to tell which ones your test has, before the clock starts
Every camera-side toggle announces itself during setup, so the whole configuration is readable in about a minute if you open the link early instead of at the deadline.
Open the invite link early, on the machine you will actually use
Setup runs before the timer. Opening it on a laptop and then moving to a desktop means redoing every permission under time pressure.
Count the browser permission prompts
A camera prompt means snapshots. No camera prompt anywhere in setup means no webcam proctoring on this assessment. A microphone prompt is a separate permission for a separate feature, so a camera request on its own is not audio capture.
Watch for a blocking screen that asks you to move
That is the liveness step. Face a window or a lamp rather than sitting in front of a bright background, and read repeated retries as a lighting problem instead of a fault with your face.
Watch for a document upload or capture step
That is identity verification, and it runs once, before the assessment opens. Have the ID physically in front of you so you are not hunting for a wallet while a setup timer counts down.
Assume focus logging, paste rules and similarity checking are on regardless
None of the three produces a prompt, and none can be inferred from what setup asked you for. Plan the session as though all three are recording, because that assumption costs you nothing.
One practical consequence of the snapshot design is worth keeping. A camera that drops out for thirty seconds leaves a gap in a gallery, not a corrupted recording. If your webcam disconnects mid-test, reconnect it, keep working, and mention it to the recruiter afterwards rather than abandoning the attempt.
What the report looks like on the other side
Individual flags are noisy and reviewers know it. Escalation comes from several channels agreeing about the same few minutes:
Snapshot gallery: 34 images at roughly four-minute spacing. Images 12 to 15 show an empty chair. Focus log: nine window switches, one of them six minutes and forty seconds, beginning at the timestamp of image 12. Question three was submitted ninety seconds after focus returned, and the similarity check matched that submission closely against a public solution.
Read any line on its own and it evaporates. An empty chair is a bathroom break. Nine switches is a normal amount of documentation reading. A close similarity match catches almost everyone who learned the standard approach to a standard problem, because the standard approach looks like itself. What moves a reviewer is the alignment. Even then, the ordinary next step is being asked to walk through the code live, not a silent rejection. Which is the practical argument for understanding a solution rather than holding one.
Where OfferPilot AI is the wrong tool for this
Worth being blunt, since a vendor is publishing this page. Code Copilot is a Windows 10 and 11 desktop overlay that reads a problem off your screen and returns a solution with the intuition, a dry run and the Big-O analysis. Its window is excluded from screen capture at the operating-system level, so it does not appear in Zoom, Teams, Meet, OBS or screenshots while staying visible on your own monitor. Set that against the table above and the limitation is not subtle.
- Capture exclusion is a screen-sharing privacy feature, and a webcam is not a screen. The camera photographs your face, not your monitor. Nothing about what your display shows can change what those snapshots contain.
- It has no bearing on liveness, ID verification, focus logging, paste rules or similarity checks. Two of those run before the clock and three run inside the assessment page itself, well out of reach of any display setting.
- It does nothing about a lockdown browser, an invigilator in the room, eye tracking, or a phone propped up as a second camera. None of those are screen capture either.
- On a HackerEarth assessment where the employer has enabled the camera, leave it closed. The whole value of that score to the company is that they can rely on it.
- Windows only. No macOS, no Linux, no mobile, no browser extension, so plenty of candidates cannot use it regardless.
The use that survives scrutiny is everything before the assessment window opens. Working timed problems against something that explains why an approach is correct is what turns a submission into fluency you can defend out loud. For the interview that follows a passing score, the company Q&A generator builds a question bank for that firm and role, and the question library covers the rounds after the automated screen.
The short version
HackerEarth uses your camera when, and only when, the employer enabled that setting, and it uses it for periodic stills with a corner preview rather than a continuous feed. Liveness and ID are separate switches that gate the start and then stop. Tab-switch logging is a different thing again, it is the one most likely to be running when the visual stack is off, and it knows that you left without knowing where you went. Read your setup screens carefully and you will know precisely which test you are sitting.