An ad circulating on social media promises to take online courses for you. What it collects is your login, what it sells is your reputation, and there’s no statute of limitations on either.

by Tim Leogrande, BSIT, MSCP, Ed.S.

🗓 SEP 10 2026 • 6 MIN 30 SEC READ

📝  ESSAY

Earlier this week, a few colleagues were discussing the web advertisement below, which has been circulating on social media.

The ad promotes the Global Classes Help cheating-as-a-service firm for college students. It claims they can circumvent several proctoring solutions such as LockDown Browser, ProctorU, and Examplify. It also lists Edgenuity, a platform for high school students.

There is a short list of several schools whose students the firm is targeting. Some of them, like Sophia, Study.com, and StraighterLine, aren’t actually schools; they sell courses that transfer into credit-granting institutions. Others are real universities: Western Governors University (where I’m on the faculty), Southern New Hampshire University, and University of Phoenix.

At the bottom is a banner of logos corrupted by the AI platform that generated the ad. One logo reads “Howvrlock.” Apparently, it mangled Honorlock, which is another online proctoring service. There is also the smeared remnants of the Examplify logo and “FCK POSTER,” which I’d like to believe is an indication of what the chatbot thinks of the person who fed it the prompt.

The scammers behind these ads describe their services as proctoring assistance, then turn around and claim they will help you circumvent those same proctoring solutions, ostensibly so they can log in to take exams for you.

But contract cheating services are extortion in a cardigan. This isn’t the first such operation I’ve seen, but I’ve held off writing about this subject because most of the coverage I had read framed it as an insider threat and nothing more. Only recently have I seen it framed as extortion, so I’ll discuss both.

Here’s how it works:

• These campaigns have been aimed at higher education institutions in the United States, Canada, and Australia.
• Students are targeted, pay a fee, and share their school login credentials. They are also directed to approve any multi-factor authentication (MFA) prompts they receive on their mobile devices so the scammers can access their Canvas, Blackboard, or other Learning Management System (LMS) accounts.
• Once the scammers have the student’s credentials, they can access sensitive information including names, student ID numbers, email addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, course information such as assignments, class materials and grades, faculty names, etc.
• They then demand students pay extortionate fees in exchange for not reporting the academic dishonesty to their institution. So a $75 writing assignment routinely turns into a $1,000 fee. If students don’t pay, the scammers report them to the university, which is what happens in the majority of cases.
• Current and past victims are coerced into reaching out to their classmates to recruit new victims. In effect, victims are forced to become unpaid salespeople for a criminal enterprise.

Extortion is the point, and the advertised cheating service is just the victim-acquisition strategy. Students are extorted under threat that their cheating will be reported to the university, that evidence of academic dishonesty will be shared with the dean, and that the dean will see it in the form of incriminating documents and impossible travel. The scammers log into student accounts using residential, mobile, and proxy IPs (through VPNs) in Kenya. Suddenly, a student has authenticated into their school’s portal from their home in the U.S. and then from Nairobi, sometimes just minutes apart. It’s convenient for deans to have that sort of evidence, which is exactly why it’s manufactured.