investigating Edumarks since December<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nKirav Doolabh from Wits and Veer Gosai from Stellenbosch University said they had alerted the Department of Basic Education to the possible breach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following Gwarube’s statements, they published the findings of their investigation into Edumarks on Groundup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Doolabh and Gosai asked the Department of Basic Education (DBE) in December to investigate the legitimacy of Edumarks. After extensive scrutiny, the department came back with its response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Edumarks is a bogus business offering a service it cannot deliver on,” the DBE stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It said that if Edumarks’ claims were true, then “they are committing fraud on multiple levels” by colluding with individuals who have unauthorised access to matric marks databases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Doolabh and Gosai then tested the service to see if it worked. They began with a matric student from the class of 2023 and received accurate results from Edumarks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, they also determined that the results were from January 2024 and did not reflect final updates after remarks, which are typically released in March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Therefore, Edumarks appears to be using results from the original matric results database sent out in January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The pair then bought the marks of a matric from the class of 2024, which Edumarks emailed at 16:06 on 11 January 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They contacted the education department, which confirmed the results were authentic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“At the time, the department clarified that only Universities South Africa had received the marks to distribute to the country’s public and private institutions,” they reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Media would only receive the matric marks on the evening of 13 January 2025, the DBE said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Universities South Africa (USAf), formerly Higher Education South Africa, is a membership organisation representing all 26 of South Africa’s public universities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The marks were sent to USAf on 11 January 2025 at 13:10, which led Doolabh and Gosai to conclude that it or one of its member universities was the source of the leak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, that means any university could have been the leak after the marks were sent to USAf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Dawood did not respond to MyBroadband’s questions about Edumarks, the company previously said on social media that it had contacted the DBE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We’re doing what our government is struggling to do. Instead of using taxpayers’ money to build a system that’s POPI compliant, they’d rather waste it on a rather pointless legal battle,” Edumarks said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Imagine how we felt when we tried to reach out to them to build them a better, more efficient, and POPI-compliant system, and they ignored us,” it said<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n“The matric results should be free. However, we charge this once-off fee for development costs.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Hawks said they descended on a Johannesburg home where a 21-year-old and his parents live to arrest the young man over the alleged leak and selling of matric results before they were officially released.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":429606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[21769,42602,98412,98411,21425,26208,98417],"class_list":["post-578698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-department-of-basic-education-dbe","tag-directorate-for-priority-crime-investigation-hawks","tag-edumarks","tag-hafil-dawood","tag-matric","tag-matric-results","tag-matric-results-2024"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578698"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578698"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":578738,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578698\/revisions\/578738"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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