How Indians Coordinate to Fake Their IT Certifications and Credentials

Executive Summary

• Indians have developed strategies for faking IT certifications.
• They frequently approach certificates as merely something to be shared with other Indians.

Introduction

Manufacturing certifications and degrees cheating on exams, and buying university degrees is are standard issue in India. This is a big part of how Indians claim to have more skills than the domestic IT workers in the countries where Indians immigrate, like the US and Europe. Furthermore, once in these countries, they very commonly share certifications. This means that one person may take certification tests for multiple other people. This article will cover how a culture of cheating to obtain educational qualifications is considered entirely normal among Indians.

Our References for This Article

If at any time you want to see our references for this article and also other Brightwork related articles see this link.

A Video on Exam Cheating in India

If not showing, open the link below.

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zPHzj2qXoc

What is commonly presented as wide-scale cheating is often reported in India but is little known to most US domestic workers. The US does not have parents hanging out of windows or schools, passing answers through windows to their children.  

How cheating moved to certifications.

Notice this message interaction on the topic of CSA administration certification. Also, notice that every single one of the commenters is Indian.

These types of posts are quite common. The first commenter is asking for a “dump” of the training. 

1. Notice the comment from the fourth commenter. He is not only offering these exam dumps but is stealing IP from Udemy Academy, which reduces this entity’s ability to provide certifications to the market.
2. See the comment from the fifth commenter. He does not want to pay the $150, which would not violate the IP of the test provider, but instead wants the certifications for free.

The H1-B lobby continually proposes that H1-B foreign workers bring skills. However, skill development requires both hands-on experience and an interest in investing in compensating content creators on technical topics.

What will happen to the quality of technical content if a higher and higher percentage of IT workers expect this content for free because they come from a society that does not respect IP or the right of content creators to benefit from their work?

The answer is that it will invariably decline.

The Billionaire Class’s Plan for Improving the Technological Capabilities of the US?

The massive infusion of H1-B workers into the US market, as we cover in the article How the H1-B Program Understates The True Number of Yearly H1-B Visas, is already pushing domestic US workers out of IT. More Indian IT workers, intent on sharing rather than paying for IT training material, are reducing the incentives to provide technical material to the market. Furthermore, Indians do not like documenting their work on projects, as they see it as their job security. We cover in the article The Hidden S/4HANA Home24 and KPS Failure, how the consulting company called KPS deliberately does not document their work on projects so that they can maximize their time on the project.

And all of these developments will help the US become more capable technologically? This is what is told to us by billionaires, who are unified of their support of foreign workers programs as we cover in the article Why Do So Many Billionaires Love the H1-B Worker Visa?

Our Experience With Indian Requests for Information

Brightwork Research & Analysis produces a large amount of content. However, of the individuals who ask for free information, it is invariably a person with an Indian name who asks for information that would ordinarily be considered a consulting type of work. These types of requests rarely come from non-Indians. Indians have also requested PDF copies of copywriting books that we have written.

This fits into the pattern that information, even the most detailed information used exclusively for commercial purposes, should be provided for free.

Indians and IP

India is on the blacklist of 11 countries for stealing IP, as is explained in the following quotation.

In its “Special 301” annual report for 2018, the Office of the US Trade Representative Office (USTR) identifies “trading partners that do not adequately or effectively protect and enforce intellectual property (IP) rights or otherwise deny market access to US innovators and creators that rely on protection of their IP rights.”

The “black list” includes 11 countries: Algeria, Argentina, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Kuwait, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and Venezuela, the Efe news reported. – NDTV

Epic Versus Tata Consulting

The case of Epic v Tata is an example of this lack of concern for IP.

A federal jury’s decision to award $940 million in damages to electronic health records software vendor Epic Systems, which had sued an India-based consultancy alleging theft of trade secrets..Several years after Epic and TCS signed the agreement, the lawsuit alleged, “Epic … learned from an informant that TCS personnel [had] been fraudulently accessing Epic’s UserWeb computer network, and that the information obtained through the unauthorized access into UserWeb was being used to benefit TCS’s competing Med Mantra software.”

The lawsuit also states: “After learning of the unauthorized and illegal downloading of Epic information by TCS personnel, and the apparent purpose of the misconduct, Epic evaluated its protected UserWeb and discovered that an account associated with a TCS employee who worked as a consultant for Kaiser in Portland, Oregon, and who worked on projects related to Epic’s provision of software and services to Kaiser, had downloaded from Epic’s UserWeb at least 6,477 documents accounting for 1,687 unique files.

Epic also alleged in its suit that TCS leaders in the U.S. and India “appear to be aware of and complicit in TCS’s scheme to gain unauthorized access to Epic’s UserWeb and information and misuse them for the benefit of TCS.”

How Indians are Faking Skills

This is explained in the following quotation.

The foreign workers also have a million tricks for SEEMING to be more qualified than us. Many IT product producers have tried to tighten up certification standards so that idiots don’t get hired to work on their platforms and mess up. For those who are honest, they’ve set up rigorous training programs to make sure that workers know their stuff. Normally companies sponsor their workers to get this training and certification, but usually not for contractors, freelancers, the laid-off workers, and the lower-ranking workers. Those can still get the training, but it’s very expensive (like around $2K per class, sometimes more than one class needed)

But our thriftier foreign colleagues have found a way around this problem.

All over social media, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other more hidden venues, you can buy the exam vouchers on a hidden black market that you’re only supposed to be able to get after completing the certified training. I’m sure some vouchers are fake and won’t work, but the sheer size and prevalence of the market says many of them do work. I was told that there is no auditing of exam voucher blocks distributed to training companies and that in at least some cases a legit voucher would work more than once. It seems that siphoning off legitimate vouchers distributed to a training center for sale on the black market might be an inside job by foreign employees of the testing or training center.

For training, I was told..

Just take cheap classes on Udemy.”

But there’s other ways to get through the test without the training.

One is exam dumps. They may smuggle in a tiny camera, take hidden notes, use other stealth technologies, or just memorize as many of the questions as possible (and several of them pool their notes afterward). Many foreign education systems emphasize memorization skills over research and reasoning. There could possibly be collusion with a test proctor too. Then people study the dumps and get a (perhaps barely) passing score that way, without actually knowing much about the product. Yet another way is for one smart person to take the test for others, provided there is some physical similarity when the ID is checked if it is.

This applies to all the major career-enhancing platforms: SAP, Oracle, SalesForce, Workday, ServiceNow, you name it. So they can make it look like they have qualifications we couldn’t afford to get honestly. – Anonymous

What is an “Exam Dump”?

This provides the questions and the answers — therefore, there is no reason to go through the process of learning the subject matter. Curiously, sharing exam dumps is not known among the domestic US worker population but is considered a familiar place among Indian workers.

Skillcert, a Site that Promises Passing Certifications

One can purchase the exam key to various certifications right online. 

Notice this quotation from the Skillcert website.

Unlike others, we update our questions every month with latest questions and tests.

That is right….the questions don’t get stale because they are lifted continuously from the certification provider.

Exam dumps are available even on the Udemy website.

How Common are Credential Exam Dump Sites..and What is the Mindset Contained in This Behavior?

It turns out very common.

Before looking into this, this author had never even heard of the term. It is not a concept to take copies or save copies of credential exams and share them or sell them. A domestic worker’s experience with this issue is found in the following quotation.

I know they are sharing credentials and have been shown “dump” sites by Indian colleagues.

Sharing credentials between Indians is very common.  This also transcends to academic achievements.

What the west would consider anti-merit an Indian would consider that they have better-developed opportunity skills.

In addition, there is an attitude that it is inappropriate to pay for something that they are obviously already qualified to learn about later. It is much better and cheaper to have someone else pay for their time. Their selfish behavior is detrimental to the work environment as their lack of skill burdens those around them.

According to this source, it is not uncommon for one Indian to take the same exam under different identities seven times for seven different other Indians to get the entire group certified. There is no concept that each individual should have their test administered. This allows Indians to accumulate credentials very quickly.

One Example

One vendor who is under heavy siege by Indian fraudsters is ServiceNow. ServiceNow issues exam vouchers in blocks without audit of where they go and how they’re used. Third parties are used for both training and testing. A valid voucher code can be used more than once, so they get shared and sold. 

Cheating is happening for all of these vendors and more:

• SAP
• Salesforce
• Cisco
• Microsoft
• IBM
• Symantec
• Citrix
• Oracle
• Microsoft

All of these vendors should take extra precautions to increase the security around their certifications.

A Non-Indian’s Experience with Fake Credentials

This quote came to us in August of 2020.

I once worked with an Indian guy and he told me that in India, they have these schools they call them programmer factories, where they train people to become computer programmers in 6 months or less. I spent 4 long (expensive) years in college to get my degree. These Indian(factory) schools are not concerned whether you get good grades or not, they are mostly concerned about whether they can place you and make money off you.

These schools are spread all over India and they target the US and European companies. This is what my Indian co-worker told me, right before he decided to go back to India to get married.

I experienced this level of corruption when I decided to try to upgrade my skills by attending a school that was  teaching .NET programming. I’m mainly a mainframe programmer, but I was between jobs at the time so I decided I would take advantage of the  Government’s FREE retraining program for people that were out of work during the 2008-2009 recession.

After I finished that 5 month program at this school, I was called by an Indian owned company based in Atlanta that promised to enroll you in an 8 week .NET training program then place you at some company located somewhere in the US.

The only catch was that they would INFLATE your Resume and say that you had 5-10 years experience,  when you actually had none. They had a guy “American” who called himself a “lawyer” who  would lie for you in case the company they were trying to place you with called for references. I worked for them for 6 months, but I was so scared the FBI would come and raid the place, plus I was constantly lying to my clients about my experience that I decided to quit. When I told them I was quitting, they tried to get me to pay for the 8 week training class which they said cost $20,000 ! I told them I would report them to the FBI so they left me alone.

This is also reinforced by the following quote, which was provided in response to the quote above.

I ran into this same thing about 10 years ago: an Indian wanted to train me in SAP, but because he couldn’t make me stay with him, I’d have to pay him $1000. They’d “spice” my resume and place me.

Just last year or so, an Indian recruiter at an American company kept having me sign right to represent. After I signed the right to represent, but received no interviews, even for requirements with 2-4 seats. This is for jobs I could have done in my sleep.

It turns out he was simultaneously working with this outfit, right here in the US: http://www.micro2mega.com/ I can guess who he was sending into interviews instead of me.

This shows the company is not just doing training for existing staff: http://www.micro2mega.com/testmonials.html.

One giveaway is the upper range of experience – age discrimination.

Here is the MicoMega website. Indian recruiting/certification/placement firms have to have terrible websites for some reason. 

Bringing New Horrible Standards of Ethics to the US While Being Top Virtue Signalers

Notice the ridiculous text from this website.

As a global company, we believe it is our responsibility to continually give back to our communities and to protect our world. The principles of corporate responsibility are always at the heart of our business—they guide our relationships with our clients, our associates and our business partners every day. As a diverse end-to-end IT solutions provider, micro2MEGA, Inc. offers a range of expertise aimed at helping customers re-engineer and re-invent their businesses to compete successfully in an ever-changing marketplace. Our experience in the business process-outsourcing arena fully complements and strengthens our service spectrum and allows us to operate as an enterprise-class solution delivery company. Our solutions aim to provide high value by optimizing cost of ownership of technology investments for customers.

Honesty & Trust: With every assignment, a client trusts us with their business. We know they’re counting on us to get the job done, and it’s our goal to deliver the people and results they expect. At the end of the day, honoring our promise is the only way to earn real Honesty and Trust.

Indian firms in IT bring unethical behavior to the US out of this world. So naturally, they have to have effusively virtue-signaling text on their websites about how corporately responsible they are, etc.

Everyone who works in IT knows the situation with Indian firms, and a good indicator of how bad a firm will be is whether it is Indian, which can in part be determined (for smaller operations) by whether the website is

• a.) horrible, and..
• b.) if the website’s text looks like the sample included above.

Conclusion

The certification system is seen as yet another system to “scam” by many Indian workers. And the way that certifications are scammed through information being shared with other Indians and for the rightful revenues to be denied to the content producers through IP theft.

Indeed, suppose Indians work as a group to falsify their certifications, while domestic workers, by and large, do not. In that case, Indian workers will appear to have more certifications and “skills.” This falsification of skills and “spicing” is also left out of the discussion regarding the skills of Indian resources.

Indian IT Survey Results

To see our ongoing survey, which includes graphs of responses and specific comments from domestic workers all over the world who have had to work with Indians, see the website indianitsurvey.com

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