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TEQSA’s Higher Education Integrity Unit has updated a database of 2,333 suspected commercial academic cheating service websites, including 579 sites specifically targeting students at Australian Higher Education institutions. This intelligence sharing will enable providers to block access to these websites from their institutional networks and is part of TEQSA’s ongoing partnership with the Higher Education sector to strengthen cultures of academic integrity.

Not only have Nigerian students been cheating from each other for years, but also the plagiarised academic work hasn’t been included in any global database. In a report, Nigeria's Vice-President announced the new EagleScan anti-plagiarism software would improve the quality of research, teaching and learning in Nigeria and West Africa. He promised that the government would ensure that anti-plagiarism measures were fully implemented in the country's institutions.

Six Iranian and Azerbaijani nationals have been arrested for stealing and selling questions and answers from the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) that foreign students take for admission to universities in the United States and Turkey. The suspects allegedly charged the “buyers” between $2,000 and $3,000 for the questions provided in their network called “quarantine houses”. While searching the addresses where the suspects were arrested, Turkish police found SAT admission papers, official test question books and a host of digital evidence.

To increase the marketing of their services, essay mills are now using comparison websites. According to an expert on academic integrity and cheating, there are over a thousand sites on one comparison site. Many of these sites provide buy-one-get-one-free or loyalty schemes, and when students try to withdraw, they can become the victims of blackmail, targeted by fake legal letters. The UK Government is introducing legislation to ban essay mills and advertising for them, but as most are based overseas, experts fear they are beyond the reach of the legislation.

A forger spotted in 2019 by the Ministry of Higher Education has been charged with forgery, counterfeiting and sale of official documents, fraud and money laundering. Since 2015, he had been selling fake diplomas by the thousands at €200 each. With the complicity of a taxi-ambulance driver who photographed patients' documents, he bought pre-paid cards under these false identities, which were then paid for by electronic transfers by the purchasers of the false diplomas via their own pre-paid cards.

Four students have been arrested for allegedly engaging in malpractice during the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations via Whatsapp and Telegram platforms. Detectives used cyber and digital forensics to intercept dozens of messages containing screenshots of the papers that are currently being examined. According to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), the Ministry of Education’s efforts to preserve the integrity of administering the examination have been jeopardized by corrupted government officials.

Although steps have been taken by the Irish authorities, such as the enactment of legislation penalizing essay mills, officials believe that universities need targeted funding to help protect the quality and integrity of teaching and learning. Reports show that 10% of students may have used contract cheating services and they can be difficult to detect as they can go undetected by plagiarism detection software.

To identify students accurately and easily detect any potential impersonator, an expert from Cairo’s National Research Centre called on African universities to introduce biometric systems based on fingerprints and to install scanning systems at entrance gates, examination halls and lecture rooms. An Egyptian soccer player has been recently impersonated during the mid-year exam at a private higher education institution in Shabraman.

Online academic cheating services that offer to do assignments for less than AU$100 are targeting international students in Australia doing vocational courses at private colleges, including those that don’t require class attendance. According to the law introduced in September 2020, providers found to be selling or advertising contract cheating services can face up to two years in prison and a fine of up to $110,000. Higher education providers are urging the federal government to extend this legislation to the Vocational Education and Training sector.