Syria Shuts Down Internet to Prevent Cheating During National High School Exams, Say Insiders

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Syria Shuts Down Internet to Prevent Cheating During National High School Exams, Say Insiders

By CircleID Reporter
August 11, 2016, 7:08 pm PDT Views: 6,303 Add Comment

“Syria goes to extremes to foil cheaters,” Doug Madory reports today from Dyn Research: “Early this morning in Syria, the Internet was almost entirely down for four hours. It was the ninth such outage since 31 July 2016—each one lasting from approximately 4am to 8am local time. And, according to sources inside Syria, the objective of these outages was to prevent cheating on national High School exams. The motivation for today’s national outage: a Chemistry final.”

— “National Internet blackouts are so routine and banal that they are now becoming a common tactic to prevent cheating among youth... [T]he Internet is taken down from 4am to 8am the exam is being distributed around the country—or at least the portion of the country still participating in the national Syrian education system. When the exams begin at 8am, mobile service is taken down until 11am. In years past, exam questions would begin appearing on social media 30-60 minutes before each exam, thus allowing cheaters to circulate correct answers and compromise the integrity of the test.”

— Dyn Research on Thursday, Aug 18 also reported daily two-hour national Internet outages in Iraq during past four days to prevent cheating on exams again.

By CircleID Reporter — CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.
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