Fake News – PSafe Blog https://www.psafe.com/en/blog Articles and news about Mobile Security, Android, Apps, Social Media and Technology in general. Thu, 19 Jan 2023 14:49:21 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.3 https://www.psafe.com/en/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/cropped-psafe_blog_purple-shield-32x32.png Fake News – PSafe Blog https://www.psafe.com/en/blog 32 32 <![CDATA[CORONAVIRUS: where to get trustworthy information]]> https://www.psafe.com/en/blog/coronavirus-where-to-get-trustworthy-information/ Mon, 16 Mar 2020 15:22:26 +0000 https://www.psafe.com/en/blog/?p=20553 On March 11, the World Health Organization’s Director General, Tedros Adhanom Gherbreyesus, officially declared that Covid 19 is a global pandemic, with more than 118,000 cases certified, in more than 110 countries and territories all over the world. We wanted to do our part to help guide you to information sources that will be useful as the entire world weathers this outbreak, and help you protect yourself from malefactors who may use this crisis to profit at your expense.

“Flattening The Curve”
All over the world, large public gatherings and sporting events are being limited to essential personnel, postponed, canceled, or rescheduled — and health experts are emphasizing the need for people to do whatever they can to reduce the potential strain of an uncontrolled outbreak on healthcare resources. Experts warn that the death toll for Covid 19 will be much worse if the infection rate overwhelms global, national, or local resources for care: hospital beds, healthcare personnel, and medical equipment and supplies. The idea of taking every reasonable precaution to reduce infection risk, and thereby flatten the demand curve, is perhaps the most important message to understand on the global & collective level. 

On an individual level, experts are advising everyone to do their best to maintain “social distance,” and counseling those who feel ill or those who are at-risk due to age or pre-existing vulnerabilities, to “shelter-at-home” whenever possible. 

Widely shared chart from Biology Professor Carl T Bergstrom, University of Washington, visualizing the need to flatten the demand curve for the impacts of Covid 19 on global (and local) healthcare system resources.

Good Sources of Information
At Psafe, our expertise on viruses is limited to those that infect digital machines. We’re also vigilant about invasions of privacy, scams, and people and organizations who use technology to profit for themselves by harming others.  As such, we understand that our role in this crisis is to provide you with digital protection, and with good information. We also wanted to offer a reminder to use good judgment about the sources you consult online to get information about coronavirus. 

Three excellent resources we recommend are:
The CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention)
The UK’s National Health Service
– The WHO (World Health Organization) 

The WHO has also published an excellent resource online to fight misinformation: a myth-busting page specifically focused on Covid 19.

Of course there are many other great sites as well. Many resourceful and well-intentioned people have stepped forward to provide others with helpful information online. This coronavirus data site, created by student Avi Schiffman in Washington, USA, is one such example.

But given the scale of this crisis, we are already seeing many scammers and malefactors who are using this moment to spread disinformation, seeking profit for themselves, and harming others.

Fake News: During Crisis, More Damaging Than Ever
“According to Emilio Simoni, director of dfndr lab — a laboratory specializing in digital security at PSafe — fake news tend to have two objectives: financial profit, with the advertisements conveyed in the fake news itself; or, the manipulation of public opinion — very common, for example, in electoral periods. “In an environment where thousands of pieces of information are shared per minute, it becomes crucial to differentiate what is true and what is not.”

Simoni explains that this ability is not evenly distributed across large populations:  “The portion of the population that has no proximity to the new digital culture and new technologies, becomes more vulnerable to fake news, especially when they address alarming issues. However, everyone, regardless of age, sex or education level, is susceptible to influence from fake news, which is why citizens, at times like this, need to share knowledge about these malicious practices on the internet, to protect themselves against misinformation.”

How To Spot, And Discourage The Spread of Bad Information
Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are working to limit or label misinformation when they see it, but the very nature of those platforms makes it difficult for them to catch every sketchy source or misleading story. Sensational plot-lines, suggesting that the virus was “human-made in a lab” or that you can protect yourself by ingesting silver or bleach, are (predictably) starting to make the rounds, and of course many of these sensational stories have the same kind of viral resilience of Covid 19 itself.

The myth busting site listed above is a great place to start to protect yourself against this misinformation, and it will be useful to continually refer-to as these stories multiply and mutate.  Consider helping your friends who post bad information by sending them a helpful PM, or, simply post the debunking information in their threads — as long as you feel secure doing so.

As Simoni suggested, the other main tell is to look with great skepticism at anyone who 1) Is selling you something, whether information or a cure of some kind, or 2) Some who is asking you for private information.

One of the great difficulties with viruses like Covid 19 is their ability to adapt and reshape themselves. The same can be said of scammers and con-artists — but scammers have some very reliable patterns you can learn to recognize and protect yourself. Whatever form their scams take, they always seem to WANT:

Your attention, (right now, no matter what)!

Your sympathy, or vote

Your trust

Your information

Your money

…And this is key too:  They’ll often use whatever information they can acquire about you publicly (or deviously) to make you feel like they know you already.

If you are involved in an interaction online with a stranger or someone new to you that has one or more of these markers, be on your guard.

We’ll Do Our Best To Help
If we become aware of specific threats or scams that threaten our customers, we’ll do our very best to keep you informed. For now, we want to thank you for taking the time to read this post, and wish you and yours the best as we all work together to take on this epidemic. Stay on guard, and stay in tune with the best sources of information you can find!

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<![CDATA[6 Ways to Identify Fake News in Your Facebook Feed]]> https://www.psafe.com/en/blog/6-ways-identify-fake-news-facebook-feed/ Tue, 18 Apr 2017 17:19:57 +0000 https://www.psafe.com/en/blog/?p=10163 We all want to see interesting, varied information on our Facebook pages, but the rising frequency of fake news is concerning, due to the spread of misinformation and scammy aspects practiced by fake news sites.

Fake news may seem difficult to control or to know what’s a phony news article — and if you should share it on your feed. When in doubt, follow these 6 tips to spot fake news:

  • Check your source: be sure the news you’re reading is coming from a reliable source that you’ve heard of before. If it’s news that’s too good to be true, it probably is, especially if it’s partisan.

Read More: Does the U.S. Government Value Your Privacy?

  • Trust, but verify: beyond leaving you vulnerable to fake news, it’s unwise to get all your news from just one source. If only one publication is reporting on a certain story, it’s probable that it’s fake. And if you only look at one news source, how will you be able to tell if they are the only ones reporting on it?
  • Look out for poor aesthetics: if a web page is badly formatted or has ads for dubious products like testosterone pills or Bigfoot photos, you should be highly suspicious of the stories the site is “reporting on.” If the blog distributing the news can’t be bothered to make the news look presentable or work with legitimate advertisers, then how could their vetting process for stories be much better?
  • Sniff out copycats: some fake news distributors will make sites that look like actual news sites, but are in fact bogus. For example, a website could buy the domain time.co, make the site look like time.com, and less observant newsreaders wouldn’t know the difference. This is damaging as it makes readers think they are learning from a valued source, but they are in fact listening to an imposter site that spreads scams, inaccuracies, and possibly virus to your device.
  • Is the story satire? Another industry that has grown in the past few years is satirical news. Though the author who wrote it might have just been trying to be funny, people without a sense of irony could interpret the story as factual. If the story seems to strain credulity to an absurd degree, then it’s probably a joke.
  • How is the quality of the writing? Trained journalists follow a set of journalistic standards in their writing. Beyond fact checking and citing sources, journalists are expected to have a decent quality of writing as well. If there are sentences in the article that are in all caps or use excessive punctuation (!!!!), it’s likely that the writer of the piece is not a true journalist. If the writer can’t be bothered with the rules of grammar, punctuation, and style —  their overall journalistic integrity is probably questionable.

The spread of fake news leads to an industry that is shaped like journalism but traffics in lies to support a certain ideology or pushes unwanted adware. Whenever one reads a dubious news source, they are implicitly supporting scammers or unverified information. Sharing it only spreads that misinformation like a virus. Only by remaining vigilant can you do your part in stopping fake news.

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<![CDATA[Facebook Makes Changes to Prevent the Spread of Fake News]]> https://www.psafe.com/en/blog/facebook-makes-changes-prevent-spread-fake-news/ Tue, 14 Mar 2017 20:00:10 +0000 https://www.psafe.com/en/blog/?p=8827 During possibly the most contentious election cycle in American history, social networks played a central role in spreading information, right alongside mainstream news outlets. For many across the country, Facebook posts and Twitter feeds served as primary sources of news.

A third-party study showed that in the last three months of the presidential campaign, top-performing false news stories on Facebook received more engagement than top stories from major news sources like The New York Times and The Washington Post. This means that hundreds of thousands of Facebook users have been exposed to false reporting.

Read More: Facebook is Testing Snapchat-Inspired Stories Feature

It’s not surprising, therefore, that Facebook has been making attempts to remove fake content from its news feed. The company recently announced updates including partnerships with third-party fact-checkers. If enough independent fact-checkers find a story to be false, and mark it as such, Facebook users will be able to see that the content has been flagged as untrue. And content that has been flagged is now more likely to appear lower in news feeds. Also, a flagged story cannot be promoted as an ad.

In its most recent announcement on the topic, Facebook revealed that it has updated its news feed algorithms to “better identify and rank authentic content.” These updates will do a better job of determining whether a post is authentic or false. The updated algorithms will identify whether a Facebook page has posted spam or asked for likes, shares, or comments. Posts from these pages will be used to “train a model that continuously identifies whether posts from other pages are likely to be authentic,” according to Facebook. If a post has been hidden by many users from their news feed, then that signals that it might be inauthentic content. These sorts of posts may, as a result, show up lower on your feed as well.

Moving forward, Facebook will continue to improve its news feed algorithms and monitoring systems to ensure that the platform encourages the spread of authentic content. The social media company will make these changes in the hopes that its role in the national conversation becomes a more positive one.

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<![CDATA[Facebook’s Trending Algorithm Promotes Fake News Stories]]> https://www.psafe.com/en/blog/facebooks-trending-algorithm-promotes-fake-news-stories/ Mon, 12 Dec 2016 13:00:03 +0000 https://www.psafe.com/en/blog/?p=6300 Over the past year, fake news stories have gained in popularity. This is partially due to the sharing nature of Facebook. Facebook’s algorithm currently promotes stories that are trending or may be of interest to you. If you’re more interested in receiving notifications about what a friend posts as opposed to a family member, then you’ll see less notifications from that family member, for example.

Further, Facebook learns what you like and dislike, and since it wants to show you stories or news you might like, the social network is more inclined to show you similar articles. Unfortunately, these stories can be factual or false. But you trust an article your friend shared, right? The point is that Facebook wants you to have a positive experience so that you engage with the website and spend more time on it — they don’t care about what you read. Many users might not care about the facts either, or don’t want to take the time to research a claim: they want to read a story that confirms their existing beliefs. This has all contributed to fake news stories being shared at an alarming level.

Read More: Order and Recommend Food to Your Friends on Facebook

Did Fake News Sites Impact the US Election?
The answer is, to quote a Facebook relationship status: “It’s complicated.” Mark Zuckerberg claims that Facebook didn’t have an impact on the outcome of the election, despite the fact that a large number of users (almost half) consume all of their news on Facebook. To ignore that, along with the rise in popularity of fake news sites on Facebook, is absurd. There are also many valid criticisms as to how major news networks handled the election. To ignore their impact on the election, and their lack of real news coverage, would also be absurd.

Nonetheless, these are only contributing factors in a much larger issue: a lack of education and critical thinking skills. With well-developed critical thinking skills, individuals can evaluate a variety of news sources, fact-check them on their own, and draw their own conclusions, as opposed to solely seeking out sources that confirm their existing beliefs or suspicions.

How to Address Fake News
Recently, Facebook and Google have vowed to crack down on fake news sites by banning them from their advertising network. Of course, this should help, but it is not enough. If Facebook and Google want to discourage the spread of fake news, then they need to make more of an effort. One option is for both sites to list whether or not an article is verified. While this is a great idea in theory, it might not change the minds of those who distrust mainstream media, the Internet in general, and online journalism.

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