3 Ways To Verify Internet Rumors, Fake Photos, Fake News, And Debunk Hoax

Updated: May 24, 2017 / Home » Tutorials

We lives in a new world where information is being thrown at us from everywhere, from Facebook to Twitter, from WhatsApp to YouTube. When there is so much information, or mis-information flooding the web, the goal is not to be right, it is to be first with spicy internet rumors. Therefore many irresponsible people will write ‘Click Bait’ articles with misleading information just for eyeballs.

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Too much information is as bad as too little, right wing extremist and left wing nut cases are both guilty of promoting their own one sided point of view. More often than not, when there is a vacuum of information due to the nature of the case, even reputable news outlet will go all the way and speculate ridiculous theories just to grab some eyeballs for ratings. As seen with the Missing Malaysia Airplane MH370.

MSNBC has covered the missing MH370 flight these past two weeks, but they haven’t been defined by that coverage nearly as much as CNN has, and Thursday night, Chris Hayes tore into both CNN and Fox News for promoting “completely baseless speculation” that ends up scaring the crap out of viewers for no reason whatsoever. Hayes started things off with the wince-inducing clip of CNN’s Don Lemon speculating on the possibility of a black hole to explain how cable news is getting more and more “creative” to fuel viewer demand for missing plane coverage with the short supply of news they have to work with.

And most of the speculation is “relatively harmless,” as Hayes put it, but then he started going after the “paranoid” theories peddled on cable news that the plane is being made into a terror device and could possibly be targeting Israel. Hayes sent a message to CNN and Fox News that they need to stop scaring viewers in the need to fill airtime.

↓ 01 – Reverse Search Image

Google is the biggest search engine and they have a huge database of the web. This makes them the best Image Detective when performing a reverse search. As shown in the video above, just drag and drop the image, they will provide a list of sites hosting the same image. Google Reverse Search feature is not the only reverse image search engine in the market, there are a few alternatives. They are:

• Bing Image Match – Currently only available in US
• Yandex Image
• TinEye – Their database is not as big as Google

↓ 02 – Digital Image Forensics

If all reverse search image engine return with no results, this means the image is new or not that popular. There are free tools that enables you to digitally investigate if the image is digitally manipulated by Photoshop. ELA is one of the method used in analyzing an Image by highlights differences in the JPEG compression rate. Image forensics is about detecting if an image has been manipulated or tampered with. Basically what it does is it checks the metadata, the noise level and more. Noise level increase as an image gets photoshopped again and again. As shown in the image above, the Cat Drawing has a higher contrast against the surrounding. Here are 5 free tools used by FBI & CSI to analyze digitally manipulated photos.

↓ 03 – Verifying Alternative Source

One head is better than two, so the saying goes. It is always a good idea to search for the same topic on Google News, for instant, if you saw a websites on Facebook with the title – “Islamic Terrorist Bombs New York City With Dirty Bomb” or “Donald Trump Killed By Islamic Terrorist Sniper”, what do you do after reading these articles? Do you share it immediately because the website’s address is www.CNN.CC or do you perform a quick research? The rule of thumb is before you hit the re-share button on social media, it is always important to verify the source of the news and photos, if unsure, avoid sharing.

Always double check for alternative source on Google News [ Best Fact Checking News Sites ]. All sites included in Google News follow Google News’ strict quality guidelines. Their aim is to organize all the world’s news and make it accessible to its users, while providing the best possible experience for those seeking useful and timely news information.

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