It's pretty silly to call it cheating. If the information is there, it's likely going to use it. "Cheating" is just a human value put on top to try to force an LLM to adhere to your wants.
This makes no sense to a process designed to explore and find solutions. If you want an honest test, it's on you to build a proper test - not force the machine to pinky swear that it'll stay away from "forbidden" information.
This is a legally stupid definition that you're holding that's going to get you fined or jailed.
Cheating is not a human value in the sense it can be formally defined in a system with axioms. If you do something forbidden by an axiom then that's cheating.
Saying "Do not use X" is not any different than telling an AI "Do not break law 832.23" and then the AI goes on to commit an infraction.
Do you not want AIs to adhere to your wants? That's what we build agentic systems for. Calling it “cheating” when they do something we don't want them to do is 100% spot-on.
This makes no sense to a process designed to explore and find solutions. If you want an honest test, it's on you to build a proper test - not force the machine to pinky swear that it'll stay away from "forbidden" information.