Information Evaluation: Everyday Playbook

Key takeaways

• When a scary forward arrives, spend up to five minutes finding its first source, and if you find nothing, let it stop with you.
• When your child brings home a surprising fact, ask how could we find out, and praise the checking whether or not the fact survives.
• When a school notice asks for money or moves a date, confirm it in the school's own app or by calling a number you saved earlier.
• Make it a house rule that one-time codes and passwords are never shared, whoever asks and however urgent the request sounds.
• Agree a family code word, and before any money moves after a panicked call, ask for it and ring back on a saved number.

Inside this bit

1. When a scary forward lands in the family group

   A forward is a message passed on from someone else, and each time it travels the original sender, date and place tend to fall away. That is how a years-old warning from another city arrives looking fresh, local and urgent.

2. When your child announces a fact from a video

   Children collect facts from videos the way they once collected stickers, and they bring the best ones straight to you. The tempting reply is a quick correction.

3. When a school notice looks slightly off

   Parents' groups move fast, and a notice with the right logo can collect payments before anyone checks it. The decision rule is simple: for any message about money or dates, confirm through a channel you already trusted before the message arrived, such as the school's app, its website or the office number saved in your phone.

4. When a prize, refund or job offer arrives

   A scam is a trick to get your money or your information. Its story changes monthly, from prizes to refunds to jobs, but the ask underneath is one of four: a payment, a code, a click on a link, or an app to install.

5. When a picture or a voice seems too real

   Pictures and voices used to be good evidence. Now software can edit photos convincingly, invent images of events that never happened and copy a person's voice from a short recording, which is called voice cloning.

6. When a relative shares a miracle cure

   Health claims travel fastest of all, because they carry hope. When a relative shares a miracle cure, the play has three moves: thank them, look at who made the claim, and take the decision to their doctor.