Recently I discovered my monitor had Brightness turned up to 100 and contrast about 90, this was giving a false brightness to my images that no one else would pick up unless they were as stupid as me and had there settings up there too.
How can you be sure that the image you upload is being seen the way you want it to, is there a standard setting or auto balance somewhere that could solve this problem?...................... Help!

calibrate your monitor if you can either using a software utility or a hardware calibrator. never have your monitor (or any av display for that matter) contrast setting on or near its maximum setting as this quickly can cause irreprable damage. you can use tools within paint programs such as Photoshop to automatically adjust an images levels and contrast to what they should be more or less. Also make sure your computer and software are using standardised ICC profiles so you know that your images will be ok whatever they are viewed on - hope that all makes sense!

There is a reason on your monitor setting that there is a 0 or a 50% reading in the middle that is the range in the setting that is closest to neutral or in this case excepted natural contrast level. But this also depends on your monitor quality

Cheers for that, I think i'm somewhere along the right lines now. There are loads of these ICC profiles to choose from, is there any that are more favourable than others or is it a matter preference?

if your just using them for desktop designs just use a standard or wide gamut adobe rgb profile