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8 Top Websites that Students Use to Cheat

Empty classroomWhat websites do students like to use when they want to cheat on writing assignments?

In an attempt to answer that question, Turnitin, a company dedicated to uncovering plagiarism, looked at more than 40 million student papers. The firm concluded that the most popular website for plagiarism is the trusted source that millions of us Americans turn to to learn stuff: Wikipedia.

Interestingly enough, Turnitin said that the websites that are designed to assist cheaters by, for instance, selling papers represent only 15% of the potentially plagiarized content that the company detected.

In contrast, one third of the suspicious content that Turnitin uncovered was traced to social networks such as Facebook and question-and-answer sites where users contribute and share content.

Do Students Know They Are Cheating?

There remains some question about whether cheaters actually know they are being dishonest. Students, who have grown up with the Internet and social media, are so used to sharing what they find on the Web that many won't necessarily understand that term papers and other writing assignments are supposed to be original work.

8 Top Sites for Plagiarism

Here are the most popular websites for would-be cheaters:
  1. Wikipedia Encylopedia
  2. Yahoo! Answers Social & content sharing site
  3. Answers.com Social & content sharing site
  4. Slideshare Social and content sharing site
  5. OPPapers.com Cheat site & paper mill
  6. Scribd Social & content sharing site
  7. Course Hero Homework & academic site
  8. MedLibrary.org Homework & academic site
Lynn O'Shaughnessy is author of The College Solution, an Amazon bestseller, and she also writes her own college blog at The College Solution.
Plagiarism image by Max Wolfe. CC 2.0.
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