Stop certification test leaks! Saga continues..

Those who have been reading my article about certification exam cheaters (http://securecyber.blogspot.com/2008/08/finally-cheaters-are-panished-kind-of.html) remember that Microsoft sued the TestKing.com for undermining their exams with stolen exam questions turned into huge profit.
Guess what? The saga continues. While being browsing the web for exam materials, I have found the links to the transcender[dot]me web site. Since several vendors resell the Transcender exam simulations where you can download discounted exams from the Transcender web site directly, the named web site has a different approach by flooding the Internet with their cheap imitations of exam questions UNDER TRANSCENDER TRADEMARK(!).When you look at the list of their sponsors, it's easy to see that the sponsors are so-called "dump" web sites where the real exam questions are being "dumped" through the blogs. There is a fierce fight against the sites like this but apparently the fight is not over.

Be aware of cheap imitations! Boycott the "dump" web sites that destroy the value of any certification since the exam becomes just a matter of downloading stolen questions and having the set of ready-to-use answers. No doubts, the companies who are looking for certified professionals will pay less attention on those certifications (even if you were not using the "dump" web sites) because the passed exam might not reflect the level of your expertise.

It is a matter of pride of all IT professionals (who learned hard and spent time and money to certify their knowledge) to fight with cheap imitators. Spread the news about cheaters!

Finally! Cheaters are punished... kind of...

Please read my comments below regarding this article from InfoWorld.

Microsoft sues site to stop certification test leaks

Microsoft claims Freetech Services was selling actual exam questions on its certification test help-site

* By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
August 18, 2008 | http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/08/18/Microsoft_sues_site_to_stop_certification_test_leaks_1.html

A federal court in Connecticut has ordered a certification test help-site to stop publishing Microsoft-related materials after the software maker sued the company, claiming that it was selling actual certification exam questions.

In a preliminary injunction signed Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Warren Eginton ordered Pass4sure.com and its parent company, Freetech Services, to stop distributing the materials.

Pass4sure sells "high quality IT exam practice questions and answers," according to its Web site. The company promises a full refund to anyone who does not pass an IT exam on their first try after using its testing engine.

However, Microsoft says that the company is selling actual exam answers. Company investigators downloaded the Pass4sure practice exams for a variety of tests in early May and found that they were "identical or substantially similar" to Microsoft's own certification exams, Microsoft said in court filings.

Pass4sure sells questions for many certification tests, including those offered by Cisco Systems, Oracle and IBM. The tests cost between about $80 and $125.

These kinds of professional certifications are an important measurement of professional advancement amongst IT professionals and can translate into bigger salaries for those who earn them.

Although Pass4sure no longer lists Microsoft tests on its Web site, cached pages linking to dozens of tests can be found on Google.com.

[My Comments] This company along with several others like TestKing are long due to panishing for unfair practice, stealing the revenue from competitors by engaging in the provocative Search Emgine Optimization technique (using the competitors products' keywords), cheating the Google and Yahoo with saturating their pages with hundreds of keywords related to their own products, selling the programs that repeat actual exams questions, and even selling the IT Certification certificates for a nominal fee. In order to stop their activity and bandit methods to conduct business, they have to be panished financially.

I can almost guarantee that they will announce a new web site under a new name and will do the same! Why am I so sure? They have already created the web sites with the Microsoft exams numbers as the domain names. All the links are being redirected to pass4sure.com and testking.com or testking.name (Example: www.640-802.net). I guess, Cisco must follow the Microsoft's steps.