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Cheating by
text messaging |
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Kids are inventive. They figured a way how to
cheat during centuries of schooling and the modern technology just
provides additional means and ways of cheating. Who is eager to learn
when you can go out with your friends and tomorrow still ace the test
with a little help from your cell phone? You have somewhere a person
with another mobile phone, sitting at a computer and with all the books
and references at his or her disposal, ready to go. All you need to do
is to simply SMS away the questions and wait for an answer. Sound
simple, does it not? Unfortunately for the cheaters, cheating by text
messaging has been anticipated and many educational institutions have
deployed measures against such activities. These measures are
widespread and very different, actually initially the solutions
differed wildly and most of the time resulted in cellular phones, bags
and other hiding places, being taken away from all participants of an
exam. Cellular phones have been banned from all exam rooms, leading to
immediate disqualification, even if the phone was turned off. The long
term solutions were being evaluated and most such educational
institutions, where students may be cheating on exams have electronic
methods of either disturbing or locating the use of cellular phones in
the exam room.
The first device that
became very popular in these circumstances was
the cell phone jammer. Unfortunately in the United States a cell phone
jammer is not only illegal to buy or sell, but also to operate,
manufacture, even import from elsewhere. Advertising such a jammer is
also deemed illegal, fines are hefty and may be accompanied by prison
sentences up to one year in jail. Nevertheless, in China it is the
primary means of thwarting cheaters in schools. The idea to convert
exam rooms into Faraday cages was dismissed because of high costs.
Another popular device is the currently legal cell phone detecting
device. These cell phone detectors are being used all over the world in
colleges and universities, where usually assistants are armed with
these devices and are walking the exam room scanning for active cell
phones. Several cell phone detecting devices are being employed, the
institutions using them claim a hundred per cent accuracy. It is being
manufactured by several companies, these devices are able to detect
signals that are being sent on a specified frequency, including the
control signal, on which the SMS messages are piggybacking. If somebody
has an active phone, or turns it on, he is busted and removed from the
exam room.
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