The Dark side of IT Certifications – Why using Exam Dumps is not a good idea.

Feroze Ashraff
February 24, 2022

IT Professional certs are definitely one of the ways to showcase your skills are highly sort after. I myself strive to keep myself updated in the field of IT and try to make it a point to sit for (and hopefully pass) at least 1 certification per year. Seen by many as the way to advance one’s career, vendor certifications are pursued by many eager networking professionals. And this is what causes the problem. As humans we tend to “generally” take the path of least resistance and thus a whole niche market of test dumps was born.  

What are exam Dumps?

Exam dumps are an actual list of questions and “possible” answers from an exam. They're produced when someone takes an exam and then immediately jots down every question and answer they can remember. The reality is, recall is imperfect. Exams sometimes swap around answer orders plus, you never know if the answers you're ingesting are actually right.

Unfortunately, exam dumping has become a full-blown industry. The sites selling brain dumps are not selling practice questions to help you learn. They are selling you pirated copies of the actual tests. What’s worst is that there are “companies” out there that sell at an inflated price and claim to provide “guaranteed results”.

Why not use Exam Dumps?

  • It's blatant cheating
  • They don't actually work
  • They facilitate familiarity, not actual learning
  • There's no quality control  

True story

Throughout my long career in education, I have encountered a few students who have used exam dumps to try to get a job or extra credit for academic courses. In both cases, they were easily identified. Within three weeks, the student who managed to weasel their way through the interview was sacked and the student who claimed extra credit was expelled for academic cheating.

What should I do instead?

Vendor approved practise exam questions. How is this different from the exam dumps?  

  • They are not duplicate questions of the actual exam.
  • They were created by the exam vendor or author to reinforce learning and to highlight areas of difficulties.
  • They are quality controlled  
  • They generally include an explanation of the answer.

Summary

Don’t use exam dumps it’s just not worth it. The risks are too high, you will be easily identified, and you are just cheating yourself.