WSI: Web Site Investigator

Information Forensics

It takes special investigative skills and practice to tell whether information online can be trusted. Almost anything can be made to look real using deceptive wording and PhotoShop.

An Information Forensics Specialist knows how to find clues and tell if a web site can be trusted or not. By becoming an Information Forensics Specialist you will much less likely be tricked into believing false information or being scammed.

Information Forensics Specialist Training

There are many ways unreliable information comes to appear on the Internet. This training helps you identify clues about the source of information and its content. Reliable sources of information are not as hard to investigate as authors and publishers that should not be trusted by investigating their backgrounds and reputations online. At the end of this training, you will be able to answer these questions:

• is the author qualified to write on the subject?

• does the publisher stand behind the information that is published?

• is the information too old to trust?

• is the information biased or objective?

• do experts respect the information?

• what clues do links provide?

• is the information accurate?

• does the evidence support an author's claim?

Like any training, becoming an Information Forensics Specialist takes practice. Don't expect to master the skills by investigating one page. After completing the six training investigations successfully you should be ready to investigate on your own.

How to Proceed

If you prefer to jump right in and get to work, you can do that by picking any of the six suspect web sites as a starting place. Make your selections using the links in the left column under Cases to Investigate.

You may discover that you need some specialized training to help you track down an author or publisher, find the date of an article, etc. If that happens, complete the Investigator Training Modules that will help you most. There are 8 Training Modules: Author, Publisher, Date, Bias, Links To, Links From, Accuracy and Evidence. The interactive Evaluation Wizard may be used to organize your thoughts as you prepare a Case Report.

To compare your findings with those of an Information Forensics Expert, file an investigative report by clicking the appropriate case link under File a Case Report.