Why Privacy Tools Matter When Evaluating Online Course Platforms

Nowadays, there are many resources for online learning on the Internet. You can find either an e-book, a magazine, or a platform for online courses. Just like at school or university, you will be asked to talk about yourself, fill out a questionnaire, and share your experience, contacts, and social networks. I want to draw your attention to one significant difference. During offline learning, your personal information is checked by a person, but in the online environment, it is analysed by various automated tools and platforms that are often used to create online courses.

Everyone may have a question: can third parties obtain my data, and is it safe to study online at all? Unfortunately, the answer is not encouraging, because yes, online platforms can be vulnerable to cyberattacks. But don’t worry, there are ways to protect your data. In this article, we will talk about the importance of privacy tools when choosing an online course platform.

Data Privacy – Why It Is Vulnerable and Important at the Same Time

In the era of digital resources, the number of online course platforms has increased. Every day, new students, teachers, and instructors join the learning process and share personal data. By disclosing your IP address, there is a risk that the data will be leaked to third parties. There are more threats in the online learning space, especially on untrusted and unprotected domains.

Why online learning platforms are vulnerable:

1. A large user base. Participants in learning platforms are students, teachers, and administrators with different training and skills in using online services. And the more parties interact with the system, the greater the risks. Someone may unknowingly perform dangerous actions that threaten security. For example, entering an insecure password or clicking on a fraudulent link are steps towards providing access to third parties.
2. Unlimited access. Every online platform is designed to be used at any time and from anywhere in the world, which makes it more vulnerable. This is used by attackers for cyberattacks and taking over confidential information.
3. Cooperation with third-party sources and tools. There are now many tools and unreliable third-party platforms for automating work and the continuous learning process. However, you need to choose very carefully and consciously with whom to cooperate. After all, using suspicious and untested tools is a way to lose vigilance and protection.

So, we talked about vulnerabilities. Now, let's find out why it is important for online course platforms to ensure reliable data protection.

• The key to user trust and confidence. Imagine a situation where you are studying in college, and in the middle of the academic year, you have a new teacher. At first, there is no understanding whether you can trust him, but you get to know him, and a feeling of trust and security arises. You are sure that everything said will remain within the walls of the classroom. The same is true in the online learning space, if users are sure that their data will not get to other web resources. They will freely share their results, successes, and interact with the platform.
• Compliance with legislation. In many countries, there are laws that control the protection and use of confidentiality. Violation of these laws provides for a certain punishment. Therefore, in order to avoid consequences, you should think about the reliable protection of personal information for online course users.
• Individuality of educational data. Online course platforms possess not only personal information of individuals, but also store individual learning indicators, level of knowledge, and behavioural characteristics of the student. If there is insufficient protection, websites will be able to gain influence over the individual and use this data for their own purposes.

What Data Do Online Learning Platforms Collect About Us?

When learning online, users leave more data than they realise. The information is collected automatically and used to improve learning and interaction between a person and the site. There are certain groups of data that online course platforms receive.

1. Registration Personal Data

This is the data that we specify when registering and creating a profile on the platform. These include last name, first name, email, age, phone number, and country of residence. This information is basic and is required to start training, issue a certificate, and interact with the user.

1. Technical Data

This data helps the service understand your actions, recognize where you are coming from, and adjust the platform for convenient interaction. Such data includes IP address, operating system, type of device, browser used to log in, etc.

1. Self-Created Content

These are comments, reviews, and answers in chats. Everything that the user creates himself and does not even suspect that, in this way, he leaves additional information. It, in turn, is accumulated and stored.

1. Verification and Biometrics

Online courses that provide certificates of completion may ask for photo IDs. These are used to verify your identity. It is also common practice to use biometric data – a photo of your face or a video from a camera – during an exam. This data is very sensitive, so it is important for the platform to specifically explain how it will be stored.

Online Courses and Security: Tools for Protecting Confidential Information

In today's world, the question arises of how to protect your data while online. After all, we learn, communicate, and buy the necessary things through various platforms and sites. Protecting confidential information includes using appropriate practices and tools. Privacy tools are applications and online services that help individuals and companies increase the level of protection of confidential data.

Here are tips on how to protect yourself in the digital world without being an IT specialist:

1. Use strong passwords. The point is that your password should be unique and contain different symbols, letters, and numbers. It is advisable to use different passwords for each account, as well as enlist the support of a manager to store and protect passwords.
2. Be vigilant with personal information. Avoid including confidential data in chat conversations, forum replies, and publishing video, photo, etc., content.
3. Use privacy tools. There are many tools for data protection. Each of them performs their functions: changing the IP address, hiding your activity, and reducing the risk of information leakage. For example, to work safely on various online course platforms, you can use the DICloak browser, which performs many functions to protect each participant of the online course.
4. Pay attention to a clear privacy policy. Each online course platform is obliged to inform users about its privacy policy; if this condition is not met, the online space is suspicious and unreliable.
5. Enable two-step verification. This is an additional layer of security. And even if someone finds out your password, it will be impossible to log in to your online platform account because your confirmation via phone or email is required.

Wrapping Up

Online learning opens up many opportunities and perspectives, but requires more awareness and knowledge about behaviour in the digital space. Online course platforms receive a lot of information from users, so it is important to be careful when choosing an online learning environment. If you are faced with a difficult task, how to choose an online platform for yourself, we recommend that you read Selzy's article. It describes all the necessary points, as well as mentions red flags that you need to pay attention to.

When choosing an online course platform, be careful and use reliable information privacy tools. After all, I think you will agree with me that personal data needs maximum protection so that it does not fall into the hands of a cybercriminal and harm you.