Evaluating the Address

People lie on the internet. Since, in most cases, you are neither seen nor heard on the internet, the people you communicate with don't really know your age, gender, and physical attributes. You may be an eighth grade student in real life, but when you're online it's fairly easy to pretend you're a 35 year old doctor.

If you put a web page online, you can easily lie. You can claim to be an expert in electrical engineering when you don't know the difference between a resistor and a capacitor. Knowing this, as a reader of web pages, how can you trust what you find online?

It's true that not eveyone lies online. In fact, most people tell the truth most of the time. But if you're using the internet as a research tool, you have to be sure. One way to help determine whether a page is reliable is to look at the site's address.

© 2001-2005 Albert L. Ingram, Ph.D.