Today on CNET Dennis O’Reilly has a good article about the trustworthiness of websites in regards to secure purchasing. O’Reilly gives some good tips and advice about assessing websites before making a transaction online. One of the tips he gives is to check the status bar as a website loads to see the server ID or ISP. This simple action can tell a user a bit about where the site originates and if the site is a personal, organizational, or commercial website. Read O’Reilly’s complete article here.

Applications for Educators
One of the biggest challenges teachers have, regardless of content area, is helping students determine the validity of information they find on the Internet. O’Reilly’s article while targeted toward consumers, provides useful information that applies to assessing the trustworthiness of any website for any purpose. Simply teaching students the differences between .com, .org, and .edu is not good enough anymore. Students need to be able delve deeper into the source of the information they’re finding on the Internet. Articles like O’Reilly’s are useful for learning about the decoding the sources of information on the Internet.