Misinformation is false information spread unintentionally; bias is when sources favor one perspective. Phishing attempts to trick you into revealing personal information. Recognizing these threats protects you online.
Look for sensational headlines and check if articles support them. Examine suspicious emails and identify red flags. Practice not clicking suspicious links.
From evaluating online information, you know how to assess a source's basic credibility — checking who wrote something, where it was published, when, and why. Misinformation and bias are the next layer of complexity: problems that can appear even in content that passes basic credibility checks, and that require a different set of questions to detect. The three problems covered here — misinformation, bias, and phishing — require related but distinct skills.
Misinformation is inaccurate or false information, regardless of whether it was spread intentionally. Disinformation is false information spread deliberately to deceive. The distinction matters for understanding the source, but both spread through the same channels and require the same detection response: find a primary source. When a claim circulates on social media, the question to ask is not "does this seem credible?" but "where did this originate, and can I verify it directly?" Misinformation often survives because it's shared by people who believed it — plausibility and emotional resonance make it spread. Fact-checking sites (Snopes, PolitiFact, FactCheck.org) are useful precisely because they trace claims back to origins. Reverse image search catches the frequent trick of using real photographs out of context — a photo from one event presented as evidence of another.
Bias is not falsehood; it is selective framing. A news article can contain only factually accurate statements and still present a systematically distorted picture by choosing which facts to include, what language to use, whose voices to quote, and what context to provide or omit. This is why "just check if it's true" is insufficient — a biased piece might be technically accurate but misleading. The questions to ask for bias are different: Who funded this publication or outlet? Who is quoted, and who is notably absent? How are the two sides of an issue described — neutrally, or with charged language? If you read coverage of the same event from three outlets with different political leanings, the differences in framing become visible. The goal is not to find one "neutral" source (none exist) but to triangulate across perspectives and identify where they diverge.
Phishing is a specific form of targeted deception: an attempt, usually via email or text message, to trick you into revealing login credentials, financial details, or personal information. Phishing messages impersonate trusted institutions — your bank, a delivery company, a government agency, or a known contact — to create enough credibility that you act without thinking. The psychological tool is urgency: "your account will be suspended in 24 hours," "your package is delayed — confirm your address now." Red flags include mismatched sender addresses (the display name says "PayPal" but the actual email address is something else), links whose destination URL doesn't match the institution (hover before clicking), generic greetings rather than your name, and requests for information that the institution already has or would never ask for via email. The core defense is the same habit used for evaluating information generally: slow down, question the source, and verify through an independent channel (go directly to the institution's website rather than clicking the link) before taking action.