Unauthorised training material websites should be shut down

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I have used the phrase 'unauthorised training materials' instead of the actual word, relating to certifications. You all should know what the actual word is though. We all earn our certifications in a moral way, by studying hard for them.

I was wondering about the following:

Why aren't these websites that sell 'unauthorised study materials' being shut down? As we know already know, sites that have pirated/copyrighted material (e.g. movies, software, music, etc...) are shut down by authorities. The same method should happen to those 'unauthorised study materials' websites. It upsets me and most people that they aren't being shut down. They should be shut down!

Why aren't (or don't) the website owners pass on the candidates personal details to the Exam Board and Vendor, that they are purchasing those unauthorised materials from their site for the exam?

Why aren't Exam Boards and Vendors not catching people who use these 'unauthorised study materials'? I assume whoever passes with mistakes is ok (e.g. pass mark is 80/100, and candidates passes with 82/100), while passing with 100% becomes suspicious?


I believe that Exam Boards and Vendors should take some sort of action (legal or non-legal, which ever is cost effective) against those websites selling 'unauthorised study materials', along with the candidates. Similar things have happen where movie industries take action against websites that have copyrighted materials on it, and are successful.

I have read that Microsoft has taken action against those 'unauthorised training material' websites, and have been successful. Others should follow suit.

 

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The bold bit is the key most of the time it is not cost effective for the vendors to do anything about it so they don't.

 

Its not cost effective, its easier to create a cheap but hard to validate exam system and rake in the cash from both the cheaters and regular folk while telling everyone that everything is fine, while in actual fact it isn't...

 

Because in some parts of the world hosting sites like them aren't illegal and it's only the exam provider who says it is. I can't remember which country it is but there is one where reverse engineering software isn't illegal so alot of the worms\trojans come from there.

Getting around cheaters is never easy, vendors have tried (and sometimes failed) to make exams harder and it's only now where testing requirements require actual hands on experience instead of multi-choice that you start to get to see the people who know their stuff compared to those who don't.

As far as the website owners are concerned, they don't care if you're joe bloggs or dennis waterman (don't ask, first proper name that came into my head) all they actually care about is your money. I know for a fact that a former Microsoft consultant was paid to join one of these sites to download the training material to see exactly how close to the exams they came and I can tell you he wasn't using his real name on the registration form.

I hate to sound big headed but I have passed exams in the past very highly (my NT4 Workstation exam was a 980\1000) does that make me a cheater because I got so close to the top mark? Same with my Security+ exam, infact I was in and out of that exam in 15 minutes and scored within 30 points of maximum.

There are some people who can simply pass exams and not need to cheat to do so whilst there are others out there who cheat because they just don't have the time.

Obviously the downside to the rampant cheating is that it devalues the certification to a point that it's worthless (NT4 Paper MCSE's anyone?), vendors like VMware and Microsoft realise that there are things that need to change and are moving in the right direction (simulations rather than multichoice) but even now that's still not fool proof.

I would honestly say that everyone has a choice when it comes to cheating, sooner or later it will catch up to them and then it makes life very difficult should you start getting a bad name because you're useless at your job.

 

My current view is that by certifying you are putting yourself in the same group as the cheaters, so therefore there is simply very little in it in terms of differentiating yourself or proving competence.

It largely does not prove anything positive about an individual unless you can back it up with a lot of other evidence, at which point I find myself asking, whats the point ?

 

Yes, but I don't need to go to a test centre or pay £100 to a cert vendor to learn stuff, in fact in most cases the time and money is better spent elsewhere...

 

Yes there will always be cheaters. However degrees are a quite different ball game, for a start you'd have to cheat well for three years on all assignments, con all your lecturers and tutors in lectures and turorials, and also cheat on 8+ unique human proctored exams each year for three years.
Quite a different ball game to brain dumping certs, people can brain dump multiple certs a day for weeks on end in 'bootcamps' and therefore beat any cert record a genuine taker could ever hope to get.

This is not really valid, there are lots of courses that offer human proctored exams that are better run and better value for money. A levels, OU qualifications, HND, Foundation Degrees. The fact that a company puts a high price on something doesn't prove its good value.

The reason nobody bothers with braindumps for MCM is there is no market because its too expensive.

 

Learning without certification need not be unstructured either.

Academic courses, books, CBT's, online courses, etc are structured.

 

Hi All,

I guess this article below:
www.cio.com/article/2434018/certifications/it-certification-practice-exams-could-kill-your-career.html
borntolearn.mslearn.net/b/weblog/posts/you-ve-been-banned
is just some scare tactics. So far I have never found anyone getting banned in my IT career using Braindump.

Can anyone please clarify if it is just Microsoft & VMware that is not considering this banning rule or it is just a scare mongering article for those braindump users ?

 

Article you posted was from 2008. A few hundred people were banned for life where there was clear evidence.

There are however likely millions of cheaters, so it's not a significant step.

Certification is therefore giving cheaters undue credence and risks discriminating against real talent. Don't we want our profession to be professional, wasn't that supposed to be the point?

Do you think Goggle, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Intel, Samsung recruit using certification?