A message arrives in a group chat. It is alarming, it is confidently worded, and several people have already passed it on. We think the most useful habit a reader can have is to stop at that moment and ask a few plain questions.

None of them needs special tools or training. They need only a little patience, which is exactly what a rumour tries to take away. A reliable report can wait a moment to be checked; a rumour seldom survives that moment.

Questions to ask of any report

First, who is the source? A reliable report says who is speaking: an institution, a named document, a reporter who was on the spot. Words that point to nobody in particular, such as something everyone is supposedly saying or an unnamed acquaintance who works there, are not a source, because there is nobody to go back to and ask.

Second, is there a date? Old news goes round again and again as if it were fresh. A report without a date, or a picture with no sign of when it was taken, cannot tell you whether the matter still holds today.

Third, does anything confirm it? Look for the original document, the official statement or the full recording rather than a retelling. If the matter is important, a second, independent outlet will usually have reported it too; if nobody else has, that is a reason for caution, not for excitement.

Screenshots and the forward button

Be especially wary of screenshots without a link. A picture of a headline or a post is easy to alter and hard to trace, and it strips away the very things needed for checking: the address, the date and the surrounding text. If the original cannot be found, treat the screenshot as unconfirmed.

Then comes the forward button. Rumours spread because they stir fear, anger or hope, and because passing them on feels like helping. We suggest a pause instead: read the whole message, not only its first line, and ask yourself whether you would vouch for it to the people you are sending it to.

Checking does not mean distrusting everything. It means giving your trust to reports that show where they come from and withholding it from those that do not. A reader who does this protects not only themselves but everyone in their chats.