According to an article in the New York Times, 90% of those polled in an independent survey stated that online privacy was a "really" or "somewhat" important issue. More than 75 percent of respondents agreed with the statement "The Internet is not well regulated, and naive users can easily be taken advantage of." Obviously privacy online is a hot button! Where do you stand on this issue?

Do you know how private your Web searches are? For instance, do you read Web sites' privacy policies? Are you aware of how websites track your movements? Do you give your information out freely to websites that request it? If so, I've got some information you need to read:

Be invisible on the Web with anonymous surfing. Learn about anonymous surfing, what anonymous surfing is, why you might be interested in surfing anonymously, how much information is easily learned about you via your Web surfing habits, anonymous proxies and services, and more.

Don't want anyone seeing what you're searching for? Search engines (and other people that use your computer) can and do keep records of searches - here's a few ways you can keep your searching history private.

Don't want companies to know your information? If you're as tired as I am of sites forcing you to go through registration just to view their content, than BugMeNot is for you. It's easy to use and makes life much simpler, not to mention it's a good guard of your online privacy and enables you to surf anonymously.

One of the easiest ways for you to get tracked online is through malicious software applications (malware) that watch what your computer is doing. You can get rid of these with free spyware removal tools.

A lot of the traps that people get caught in online could be avoided with some common sense Web safety. Use my Safe Search Checklist to keep yourself from being tracked online.

School is still  in full swing for many K-12 folks and college students. For many people this time of year, the dreaded Research Paper is starting to loom menacingly on the horizon, with something called "proper citation required" tagging right along behind. If you use something you've discovered on the Web as part of your paper, you need to cite it a little bit differently than you would a book, magazine, or encyclopedia. Find out more here: How to Cite an Article from a Website.

Back up a second. Before we start citing anything, you need to make sure that the website is a reputable, credible source. You can do that with this article: How to Evaluate a Website: Is It Worthy of a Citation?

How do you test a website for credibility? Are there certain signs, signals, or informational content that you look for in deciding whether or not you should believe what a particular website is trying to tell you? Let us know in the comments.

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Looking for free images? Here are thirty sites where you can find completely free images, available for use on your blog or web site. All of these sites offer royalty free images for your use (be sure to check each site for specific guidelines that they request you follow in order to use their images).Read Thirty Free Image Resources on the Web to find out more.

And speaking of free stuff on the Web....

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One of the most innovative trends to appear in the last year or so is real time search; the ability to access updates, information, news articles, blog posts, and all sorts of content as they are published on the Web, instantaneously. Real time search gives you instant access to instantly published information. Learn more about real time search, and how you can use the real time Web to find all sorts of information.

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