Sign 1: The Message Tells You to Forward It
Any message that ends with "forward this to 10 people" or "share before it's deleted" is engineering urgency, not reporting news. Legitimate government advisories, hospital notices, and news alerts do not come with forwarding quotas. The instruction to share is itself the signal. Chanakya wrote in the Arthashastra that a message designed to move fast is designed to move before it can be questioned. The forwarding demand is the tell, it skips your judgment on purpose.
Sign 2: No Source, No Date, No Name
Real information has an origin. A genuine warning from the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai names the issuing department, a contact number, and a date. A genuine health advisory from AIIMS or the Ministry of Health links to a press release. When a WhatsApp forward carries none of these, no named doctor, no institution, no publication, no date, the absence is the answer. Rumour travels without credentials because credentials invite verification. The blank header is not an oversight; it is a design choice.
Sign 3: The Numbers Are Suspiciously Round
"Over 5,000 people have died." "This kills 90% of those who take it." Real data is messy. Epidemiological figures come in decimals and confidence intervals, not clean thousands. When a viral forward cites a perfectly round number with no linked study, the number was chosen for impact, not accuracy. The same applies to prices: "petrol will hit ₹200 per litre tomorrow" arrives with no budget document, no ministry circular, no named economist. Round numbers that produce panic are almost always fake.
Sign 4: The Image Looks Slightly Wrong
A photograph of a flooded street, a crashed vehicle, or a hospital queue that appears in a forward about a current Indian emergency is frequently pulled from an unrelated event, sometimes from another country, sometimes from years earlier. Two things to check immediately: whether the image has a watermark from a foreign news agency, and whether the lighting or signage in the background matches the claimed location. A hoax about flooding in Chennai that uses a photograph of a Bangkok street will show Thai script on shop signs. You do not need a tool to catch this. You need thirty seconds of looking.
Sign 5: The Cure Is Absolute
"Drink this and cancer cannot survive." "This one herb reverses diabetes in three days." Medical misinformation in India overwhelmingly follows this pattern: an absolute cure, a single ingredient, and a claim that doctors or pharmaceutical companies are suppressing it. No peer-reviewed study, no clinical trial, no named researcher. The suppression conspiracy is always present because it pre-explains why you haven't heard of this through official channels. When the cure is total and the evidence is invisible, the message is a hoax.
The 60-Second Check That Settles It
Open a browser. Type the most specific claim in the forward, a name, a number, a location, into Google News. If the claim is real, at least one mainstream outlet will have covered it. If nothing comes up, that silence is your answer. For image-based forwards, go to images.google.com, tap the camera icon, and upload the photograph. Google reverse image search returns the original source and date within seconds. For health and science claims, AltNews and Boom, both India-based fact-checking organisations, maintain searchable archives of debunked forwards going back several years. A rumour that has circulated before will almost always appear in their databases. The entire process takes under a minute. The misinformation that spreads fastest in India is not sophisticated. It relies on the assumption that you will not check.
The five signs and the 60-second verify process are not separate tools, they work as a single filter. The signs tell you when to be suspicious; the check tells you what is actually true. A forward that triggers even one of these signs and fails the search is not a grey area. Stop the chain there.
