When conducting remote web-delivered exams in a distance learning course, we make the exams available over a period of 48 hours, allowing the students to choose when in that period they will undertake the exam. This paper describes an electronic ‘watermarking ’ system that we have used to check whether the completed exam returned by a student is the same exam that the student downloaded, or whether it is one that was downloaded earlier by another student. Findings from the use of the system lead to some disturbing questions about the practice of distance education and education in general.