Stop taking all the screenshots you see on social media or receive on messaging apps at face value. Creating false information only takes a few seconds. Demonstration.
In times of crisis, false information spreads on the Internet and messaging applications like wildfire. And for good reason, the conspirators behind these fakes news are spoiled for choice when it comes to inventing false information from scratch.
From photomontages to imaginary messages and testimonials shared on WhatsApp and Facebook, to bogus screenshots posted on Twitter, any means are good to spread false information and fuel conspiracy theory. It is no coincidence that WhatsApp has decided to limit the transfer of messages to curb the spread of fake news.
While some content such as photos or faked videos require some technical skills, others allow in a few clicks to falsify the content displayed on any established website.
The content of a bogus site in 2 minutes
The technique is well known to technophiles, but probably much less to the general public. With just a few clicks, any Internet user has the possibility of making popular websites say the biggest things. How? ‘Or’ What ? By simply using its web browser and the development tools it integrates.
Take Google Chrome for example. To bogus the title displayed on a site, all you have to do is select it then, using a right click, open the menu “Inspect“. It is then possible to view the code of the page, but also to edit it to modify the displayed content (example below).
Once the code inspector is closed, all that remains is to take a screenshot (image below) and distribute it on social networks, hoping that the fish bites on the hook and that the image of the fake web page, however crude, is shared en masse.
The modification is not applied directly on the site but only on the display, locally on the computer. Once reloaded in the browser, it returns to its original title.
So you don’t need to be a computer genius to generate false information on the fly by relying on the interface and graphic codes of a legitimate site.
If in doubt, paste the title in Google
A priori, you have no reason to doubt the information shared by your friends or family members. Whether it is out of naivety or lack of discernment, the coarser the information, the more it is shared, especially on social networks.
If this seems like a simple matter of common sense, when in doubt, have the instinct to launch a query on Google, typing verbatim the suspicious text displayed on the screenshots you receive. If the information is authentic, the search engine has necessarily indexed it and you can easily find the original page.
Be extra careful, however, by also checking the site URL to make sure you are viewing the genuine site, and not a faint copy, even a satirical one.
A recommendation also valid for messages shared in mass
As simple as it is, this tip also applies to messages you receive on Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. With the coronavirus crisis, many publications on recommendations or remedies all as far-fetched as each other have circulated and have been shared hundreds, even thousands of times.
Again, take a few seconds of your time to copy and paste the message into a search engine. If the message is bogus, it will most certainly be referenced on specialized sites tracking false information. You will thus avoid being an additional link in the chain of propagation of fakes news.