Before you look at anything else, notice one thing — did you go looking for this, or did it arrive on its own? Something you didn't ask for deserves a different level of attention than something you went and found yourself.
This is the first question, before any other check on this site, because it costs nothing and it's almost automatic once you know to ask it.
If you searched for something and found it, or you opened an app or website you chose to open, you're in control of what you're looking at. If a text, call, email, or message arrived on its own — from a number you didn't save, an account you don't follow, a name you half-recognize — someone else decided you'd see it, at a time they picked, for a reason that's theirs, not yours. That doesn't make it fake. Plenty of real things arrive unprompted: a doctor's office confirming an appointment, a package update, a bill. But it does mean the message had a sender with an agenda, and it's worth a few seconds to notice that before doing anything it asks.
Nothing about a message's content tells you this — a real photo, a real name, a real logo can all arrive unprompted too. The question isn't "does this look legitimate." It's simpler and comes first: did I choose to find this, or did someone choose to send it to me.
The second question follows naturally from the first: if this arrived on its own, do you actually know who sent it, or do you only know who it says it's from?
A name in a text, a photo on a profile, a voice on a call — none of these confirm who's really there. That's not a reason to distrust every unfamiliar message. It's a reason to notice, honestly, whether you know the sender or you're taking their word for it. Those are two different situations, even when the message looks identical.
This lesson isn't where that gets resolved — What to Do When You're Not Sure covers the actual habit for closing that gap, when it matters enough to check. What matters here is just noticing the gap exists in the first place, instead of skipping straight from "this looks like my bank" to "so this is my bank."
Most messages that arrive unprompted are exactly what they claim to be. The point of asking "where did this come from" isn't to treat every unexpected text as a threat — that would make ordinary life exhausting, and it's not what this course is asking of you.
The point is narrower: when something unprompted also asks you to do something — click, pay, share, decide quickly — that combination is worth a beat of attention that a routine appointment reminder doesn't need. Noticing where something came from is how you'll know, later in this course, which of these checks are actually worth running on it.