Before You Join that Online Class: Bad Signs to Look Out For

One of the things that we find exceedingly fascinating is the fact that knowledge has become so easily accessible for anyone who is seeking it. What’s terrible about it is the fact that there are people who take advantage of those seeking additional knowledge—especially the people who try to learn more about MS Excel.

There have been far too many horror stories about people who simply wanted to gleam a better understanding of a concept and end up being swindled by two-bit petty criminals. Back in the day, people would only generally worry about the physical presence of criminals. In today’s society, a majority of crime is now perpetuated online.

We place emphasis on this because in the pursuit of knowledge, people generally find themselves online. With the popularity of online classes, it is highly important that people be more aware of any bad signs that exist so you don’t end up wasting your time, money and putting your identity at risk.

Here are a few bad signs that you should look out for:

Grammatical Errors

Seemingly minor but is usually a pretty good indicator of the legitimacy of a service or a website. Any legitimate service—especially one which aims to educate others—will be particularly strict about their grammar and their content.

While we’re not saying that people shouldn’t be able to make mistakes, if the words are fairly simply yet are continuously misspelled, you may want to consider that to be a red flag.

Check the Contact Page

Any legitimate service or brand will always have a contact page. They should have clearly presented information that you can actually reach. If you cannot reach them through the information provided, you may want to step on the brakes when it comes to approaching that site.

This may not seem like an important thing but having a good contact page with working details provides legitimacy. Even then, you should be careful if you are able to reach them. Do not provide them with any personal information that can compromise your personal security.

Fishy Payment Methods

There are a lot of free online classes available, that much is true. However, there are learners that would be more comfortable with the idea of paying for a service since it at least would give them an assurance of quality.

Usually, payment methods will be through credit card or a service like PayPal. If they ask you to do a bank transfer, you’ll have zero security about you getting your money back—in case you are unable to complete the course or would like a refund.

Points to Remember

All it takes is one sign up at a fraudulent website and criminal elements will know enough about you to be able to open up accounts in your name. We certainly hope that this never happens to you. So we hope that the tips we’ve provided will be super helpful in keeping you on the right track.

Have you ever tried to sign up for online classes? What signs do you look out for?