5 tips to know authenticity when looking for information online

Rakesh Singh, Academic Implementation Head, Orchids The International School, Bangalore

In this information age, the internet has become the most important source of information and knowledge gathering. This is true for students too, who are often looking for information regarding their school work, project work, assignment, college admissions, etc. It is very important to understand how to retrieve correct information online and avoid fake and wrong content, which may cause trouble for you in the future. Here, in this article, few important tips are written, which a student should use to know the authenticity of the content source when seeking information online.

Content source – When we search topics like “Artificial Intelligence” on Google (or any search engines), we get millions of web pages in our search results. There are web pages created by university professors, government websites, company pages and there are pages created by a novice too. It is important to understand which content to refer to when you are seeking information online.

As a thumb rule, any information coming from the government, university, or from the company will have more authentic information than a blog from an unknown person. For this, browse the website and go to the “About Us” section of the website, and see what this website is about. By doing this, it will give you an idea of who is giving you information. If the website is from an individual, check online (by searching name of person) and find who this person is by checking the LinkedIn page of the person.

It is important to make a note on domain extension to check the validity of the website and its content. For example- Indian govt websites end with “gov.in", Indian universities like IITs and IIMs end with "ac. in". If you are seeking information regarding govt jobs or college admissions, make sure you are checking the right website. Companies mostly use ".com” , as it is the most accepted form of domain extension. You can cross verify the company by checking the LinkedIn or Google Business pages of the company.

Publication date – When you are checking any web page for required information, keep an eye on when was this content created/updated. If the content has not been refreshed for the last 5 years, you may be looking for old information which may not be very useful for you. Content created or updated lately will have more valuable and recent information. This point is especially applicable for the content which is evolving and time-dependent, for example – Robotics has evolved over time, and what we are looking for now, may not be present in old articles. Here, just note that there is some content that is time-independent. For example- Information related to basic concepts like Pythagoras' theorem, Newton's laws, Basic English Grammar etc.   

Research content Aggregators – If you are into academic research, you need to update yourself on information related to scientific research in your research areas. Websites like Google Scholar, Microsoft Research, and ResearchGate provide a collection of research articles, journals, conference papers, and other research-related information. In academic research, any wrong information or fake data can seriously impact your work and research time. So, you need to make sure that the articles or research papers you are referring to, are from reputed publications.

Reference Source – Authentic web content will provide a reference to sources from where information flow started. For example- A good website will always acknowledge sources of information, like reference to the original research, news, image source reference, etc. This means that author has done homework in preparing for content and has used previous information sources to bring upon the point of his/her own.  Reference sources are highlighted as a hyperlink in text, or at the bottom-most of the webpage. The quality of reference sources is an indicator of the availability of good information on the webpage.

SSL Certificate – Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate has become a standard for all websites. Websites now start with "https://”  , and there is also an indicator on the browser whether the connection is secure or not.  Make sure websites which you are referring to are following this standard; else you are in danger of phishing attacks.

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