Pearson SCORM documents have a dead man switch. (and are monitoring you) ((probably))

[chazzy2501]

I've been having a devil of a time trying to get some scorm files to works for Active Studio 2 Vert on the frog VLE system. The SCORM would load but show only a blank page? I thought I was missing dependencies at first but after hours of checking it occurred for me to use Wireshark to see if my network settings were fluffed.

 

I found that the locally hosted SCORMs dialled home and if they couldn't reach home the SCORMs failed to load.

 

You see I never expected the scorm to dial out so no firewall provision was made... Every scorm that is run makes a .js query to research.pearson.com that means they know what client is using what scorm at what time and from where. BUT the other disturbing thing is if the scorm can't reach this address it fails!

 

if Pearson fold or change their mind all your Pearson SCORMS could fail..

 

[AngryTechnician]

And given how Pearson recently completely shuttered the online version of Tout le monde after (apparently unfixable) security holes were found... I've stopped buying anything from Pearson.