Police have tracked down a 19-year-old male high school graduate in the Tohoku region who may have been involved in seeking answers online for questions from entrance examinations held in February at four prominent universities while the tests were in progress, investigative sources said Wednesday.
Police have already established that the same mobile phone was used during the four separate exams at Kyoto and Doshisha universities in Kyoto, and Waseda and Rikkyo universities in Tokyo, the sources said.
An Internet user going by the online name of “aicezuki” sought answers on Yahoo Japan Corp.’s “chiebukuro” (pearls of wisdom) website for questions from entrance exams at Kyoto, Doshisha, Waseda and Rikkyo universities from Feb. 8 to 26.
Icons indicating the questions were posted via mobile phone appear on the posts. The police located the Internet Protocol address of the user who posted the questions under the name “aicezuki” and found a DoCoMo mobile phone was used after linking the IP address to the handset number, the sources said. Investigators suspect the questions were posted online from the test rooms and are examining if any of the test-takers appeared to have copied the answers provided by third parties on the Yahoo site on the answer sheets.
Cases of cheating at entrance exams for Japanese universities are now so numerous that the universities are considering the jamming of mobile signals.
Cell phone jammers have come under the spotlight in the wake of recent cheating incidents during entrance exams at four prominent universities, including Kyoto University. Such jammers transmit radio signals in the 800 MHz frequency band, which is used as the mainstream carrier frequency band for NTT DoCoMo’s and KDDI’s au phones. Products targeting other frequency bands are also available.
The k2p blog 