Source Checking
An SMS arrives on your mother's phone. 'Punjab Government has announced 5,000 rupees for every student. Click this link to register.' She forwards it to the family group. Within an hour, twenty aunties have clicked the …
There is more than one way to understand this. If you have only been taught one, you have been taught less than you deserve.
There is more than one way to understand this. If you have only been taught one, you have been taught less than you deserve.
An SMS arrives on your mother's phone. 'Punjab Government has announced 5,000 rupees for every student. Click this link to register.' She forwards it to the family group. Within an hour, twenty aunties have clicked the link. By evening half of them have given away their CNIC numbers. The story did not start in the SMS. It started somewhere upstream, and you can almost always trace it back if you know how.
Two words to learn. Primary source means the original place a piece of information first appeared. A government notification on punjab.gov.pk is a primary source. A research paper on PIDE Pakistan's website is a primary source. The State Bank's monthly report is a primary source. Secondary source means somebody talking about a primary source. A Dawn news article reporting on the State Bank report is secondary. A WhatsApp forward summarising a Dawn article is tertiary, and a screenshot of a WhatsApp forward is barely connected to anything real.
Tracing a viral SMS. The 5,000 rupee message can be traced in five minutes. First, copy any unique line from the SMS, like 'every student' or the link itself. Paste it into a Google search. You will probably find a Geo News fact-check article from last year, or a PTA advisory warning that the same scam ran in 2024. Second, go to punjab.gov.pk and search 'student stipend'. If no real scheme exists with that amount, the SMS is a fraud. Third, search the link's domain on whois.com. Real government domains end in .gov.pk; fake ones use .info, .xyz, or random numbers.
When you find the original primary source, read it once with your own eyes. Notice the date. Notice who wrote it. Notice whether it actually says what the SMS claimed. About six times out of ten, the primary source either does not exist or says something completely different. The remaining four times, you have learned something new about how Pakistan actually runs.
Source checking is a kindness. When you trace one viral message and reply to your family group with the actual link to the actual policy, you are not showing off. You are saving an aunty from giving her bank details to a thief in Lahore. Do this once a month and you become the most useful person in three group chats.
Estimated time: 13 min