New And Improved

Net surfers, beware: Is the information you get from the Web reliable? "Anyone can publish information on the Web for free or nearly free," says Bliss Sloan, vice president of EagleRidge Technologies Inc., a computer consulting firm in Rockwood, Tennessee. "Because of this ease of publishing, there's perhaps more incorrect advice on the Web than in other media."

How do you find Web sites you can trust? Sloan's suggestions for weeding out the good, the bad and the ugly:

• Go straight to the source. If you want to find information about Hewlett-Packard printers, for example, don't visit a clearinghouse site; go to the Hewlett-Packard site.

• Use several search engines to research a topic. Then visit the sites that showed up in more than one search. They're likely to be the most credible.

• Consider the site's purpose. If it's advertising, be aware that any information given may be skewed in favor of the product or service.

• Look for sites that list plenty of contact information. It's easy for a dishonest person to hide behind an e-mail address.

• Visit sites of companies, organizations and publications with which you are already familiar and know to be trustworthy.

"There's an amazing amount of good information on the Web," says Sloan, and if you carefully screen sites, you're likely to get good results.