Summery: A Facebook post containing viral links that the University of Liberia is offering free online courses including certificates and exams is fake.
On January 23, Home of Life Services, an online platform on Facebook, claimed that the University of Liberia (UL) has started offering over eighty 80 free online courses including free certification and exams. The post contains links that automatically redirect you to other websites.
Fact Check Report by: Siaway T. Miapue- siawaytmiapue@gmail.com
Within less than three days, the post went viral, generating over 1.2k reactions, 288 comments, and 63 shares.
The Claim
Home of Life Service claimed, “University of Liberia free online courses… Free 4-week online course… Up to 80+ courses… Free certification, free exam.”
Rating Justification
To authenticate the claims, we decided to test the site by clicking on the link indicating ‘APPLY’. Upon clicking, we were automatically taken to another website titled “Freeonline courses” containing several options including online University Courses, Online Degree Programs, Certificate courses, Training Courses, Short courses, online nursing programs, and English courses.
Clicking on any of the options again took our fact checker to another website with no connection to the State-run University.
However, to also determine the safety of the viral links for possible usage, our Fact-Checker inserted it into Scamdoc an online tool that evaluates “digital identities” reliability and email address or website. The tool analyses the viral link “Trust index” and declares it “Very bad” warning that it is “only for experienced users!
We also checked the official Facebook page and website of UL but did not see any information.
To further verify this post, our fact-check desk then contacted the Head of UL Relations, Mr. Norris Tweah and he classified the online post including all the links as “FAKE”.
Conclusion
Based on these findings, we therefore conclude that the claims by Home of Life Services containing viral links that the University of Liberia is offering free online courses including certificate and exam is fake.
The only online course at UL are the ones done by students attending the school through a platform call eLearning Moodle every active semester or during the period of emergency.