Surprisingly, I got a really interesting e-mail from a LinkedIn Member wanting to know if I wanted someone else to take my certification exams for me.
I never thought of LinkedIn as a vehicle for trying to get students to cheat, but it also makes sense. Yet with the solid number of barriers in place to make sure cheating does not happen, I’m going to be pretty dubious that this is something that will actually work. Apparently (uncited) a recent study by the University of California, Irvine found that over 50% of LinkedIn users have seen someone solicit cheating on a certification exam. The study also found that the most common way to solicit cheating is through direct messages, followed by group chats and public posts.
I got this as a DM in Linkedin.
Which is great, but I can’t find that study in Google Scholar or in Google at all, so this might be a made-up reference, which in its own right is a form of cheating.
The other link to this is that LinkedIn has policies in place to discourage and prohibit such activities. They actively monitor and remove content that violates their terms of service, which includes any attempts to promote cheating or dishonest practices. Additionally, LinkedIn encourages its users to report any inappropriate or fraudulent behavior they come across on the platform.
It’s important to remember that the majority of LinkedIn users utilize the platform for professional purposes and adhere to ethical standards. Certification exam integrity is typically maintained through strict exam protocols, proctoring measures, and secure testing environments provided by certification bodies or authorized testing centers.
All in all, interesting, and pretty risky.
If you get offers like this on LinkedIn, report it and walk away. Block the profile.