麻豆约拍

On our programme on Monday 25th November 2024, Rip Off Britain investigated the hoax Facebook posts plaguing social media. We found posts requesting help to find the owner of an injured dog and asking for the posts to be widely shared. The posts had been shared in local groups across the country, and often had hundreds of likes and comments. However, the images had been taken from an article that appeared in the news years earlier, with a totally different, fake, back story accompanying them.

How does the scam work

The posts were part of a scam known as ‘Bait and Switch’ the photos and emotive story reel people in, and then fraudsters switch the content, editing the post and turning it in to a scam. In the programme the posts about the injured dog, after they had been shared a sufficient number of times to ensure they looked legitimate, they were edited to be fake property listings scams. We also identified hoax posts claiming to be looking for missing children or elderly relatives.

Full Fact’s top tips on spotting hoax social media posts

In HQ, journalist Tony Thompson from independent fact checking charity Full Fact explained how you can spot a hoax Facebook post and avoid sharing it with your friends and followers.

· The comments are disabled. Most, but not all, people genuinely trying to find a lost family member or pet are seeking information, so would likely want to allow people to comment.

· The caption has been copied and pasted. To check, highlight some of the text, and copy and paste it yourself into Facebook’s search function at the top of the page. If posts with identical or almost-identical text appear, even with different images, it’s likely a hoax.

· The image has been used elsewhere. You may want to attempt to see if the image has been taken from elsewhere. Even if you can’t find the image elsewhere though, the post may still be a hoax. Many hoax posts use images lifted from other Facebook pages, which may not come up in a Google reverse image search, for example.

· It’s posted by a page, not a profile. Watch out for posts uploaded by someone with a newly-created page, rather than a regular profile account, particularly if they’ve not posted anything else.

· The image doesn’t look like it’s from the UK. For example, pictures have American police cars or petrol stations in posts supposedly about events in the UK.

· The language used doesn’t sound like it’s from the UK either. For instance, any reference to a ‘silver alert’ in a UK Facebook group should trigger an alarm bell. Silver alerts are used in the US to notify the public about missing people.

· There’s a red pin or red siren emoji. As some on Facebook groups dedicated to highlighting hoax posts have pointed out, hashtags and the emojis are often used in hoax posts

· Check if it’s been edited. If you think a post may have once been a hoax, check if it’s been edited. Clicking on the edit history (using the three horizontal dots at the top right of the post) will show you if the original content has been changed.