Signs of a Bad Health Website

Since we are always searching the internet for health info I thought this is worth knowing.
Signs of a Bad Health Website
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7308267n

It looks like ShopSmart is part of Consumer Reports whether good or bad.

Health advice you can trust
By Robin Melen on January 13, 2011 12:01:00 am

Health-sites Admit it—you’ve gone to one of the myriad medical websites out there to check a symptom, right? I’ve done it. What do the back twinge, the foot pain, that sharp-stick-in-the-side feeling mean? Am I dying? I even check other people’s symptoms. But how on earth do you know what sites are reliable?

In our March issue, on newsstands now, we discuss 24 sites we think you can trust with your medical inquiries. Here are just a few:

Start, of course, with ConsumerReportsHealth.org. It costs only $19 a year for the full website, but there’s a lot of free info there, like on ear infections and glaucoma and supplements, etc. Check it out!

But there are also a ton of other sites, so we came up with a list of free and almost free sites that we think you can trust.

For asking questions: ShareCare.com

For doctors and resources: DocBoard.org

For family health: BabyCenter.com

We also give you a list of 10 sites we think you should avoid, and why, including ones you’ve probably used yourself!

Here’s our advice for figuring out what sites are trustworthy:

Check to see who created the site. Does it have .edu, .gov or .org in the address? Those are a good start (though you don’t need to limit your search to those suffixes), because that means they’re run by an educational institution, the government, or a nonprofit. Then look at the About Us page to see if the site is run by doctors or sponsored by a drug company, for instance. You might not want to rely on a pharmaceutical company alone to answer your medical questions.

Who’s on the advisory team? If it’s doctors and researchers, you’re probably good. There’s a little symbol to look for, too that says site complies with the HONcode standard, which means the site meets certain standards of trustworthiness.

And make sure your privacy is protected. Read the privacy policy that tells you what they do with info collected about you.

The Full Report is here -
http://www.shopsmartmag.org/2011/01/hea ... trust.html

They're charging for information... to me that is not a good site sign to begin with, not if it purports to be helpful to people with medical problems. And spam is not allowed here anyhow.

I'm a medical librarian and I recommend the following tutorials/Web pages for understanding how to evaluate health info on the Internet:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/heal ... rfing.html
http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen ... rview.html
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/fact ... n/internet
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/webeval/webeval.html

Debbie