![\"Fact](\"https:\/\/media.kasperskydaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/86\/2013\/04\/05202820\/sm_factcheck_blog_title.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nFrom the poor mutts in dog homes that are about to close, to the Statue of Liberty at the center of a tsunami \u2013 you\u2019ve no doubt seen these sorts of messages on social networks and been suitably shocked or awed by them. You may even have clicked Like, Retweet or Share. What these viral messages have in common is that they create such an impression that they are often shared further without any serious thought being given to them. And that\u2019s a pity, because in most cases the events have either finished (that dog home closed ages ago), or didn\u2019t even happen (the Statue of Liberty is still standing). \u00a0Convincing text as well as the use of Photoshop can make it difficult to\u00a0distinguish the\u00a0truth from the lies; it now entails some key skills familiar to a modern journalist \u2013 the ability to check facts.<\/p>\n
Reliable News Sources<\/strong><\/p>\n A modern journalist has to work so quickly that some inaccuracies are inevitable. That\u2019s why even largest news outlets like BBC and CNN publish factually incorrect information from time to time. But they correct such mistakes as soon as the situation becomes clearer. That\u2019s the key difference from minor sites and personal blogs, authors of such blogs rarely bother writing retractions. \u00a0So the general rule is: big and reputable news agencies are more trustworthy, smaller and specialty web sites deserve less trust and blogs and social networks. deserve the least amount of trust. However, blogs and social networks are especially challenging to disregard as we are inclined to trust friends.<\/p>\n If you read a story with an emotional presentation of the facts, exaggeration and the absence of proof, it\u2019s wise to check all the facts mentioned. The information may be outdated (especially relevant if you\u2019re reading to a call for help\/charity\/etc.) or totally untrue. It takes only a minute to check it yourself.<\/p>\n It is worth knowing that cybercriminals actively use misinformation to allure victims to malicious websites. They typically use important and current news. So, before clicking that link to learn more about an event, think about the news source and take measures to protect your computer<\/a>.<\/p>\n So, if we see a suspicious\u00a0news article or a blog post, how do we check it?<\/p>\n Just Google it<\/strong><\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the most reliable method, but it produces the quickest results. You open Google (or Bing or another search engine), enter the main details of the suspicious\u00a0message and see what results are returned. The painstaking and more reliable way is to analyze the text in the links returned by the search engine \u2013 check who wrote them, compare the context \u2013 but most people don\u2019t have time for that. It\u2019s simpler to just look at what sites the texts appear on rather than what is written. If no serious, authoritative sites (major news sites that don\u2019t specialize in tabloid stories, official government sites, official company sites, etc.) appear on the first page of results and all you can see are discussions on social networks, then you can dismiss the whole thing as a hoax.<\/p>\n A recent example appeared in the online resource Vatican Crimes which ran a particularly seedy church-related story. The details were outlandish enough to alarm an attentive reader:<\/p>\n We copy the headline and paste it in Google. The first result is our questionable article. After that it\u2019s all forum discussions by shocked readers. To completely verify things, we click on the News tab to see the results from those sites that Google considers to be news. The result is pretty conclusive \u2013 not a single match. You can breathe a sigh of relief \u2013 that\u2019s one less transgression that can be attributed to the church.<\/p>\n Search for the Source<\/strong><\/p>\n A more complicated method of fact checking which professional journalists use is to look for the source of the information. Official government sites will be the first port of call for information on legal or state-related activity.<\/p>\n If the news concerns a product or a service, the company\u2019s official site needs to be found (Google plus \u201cXXXXXX official site\u201d will help with this) and then the news section. If nothing is found there, a professional journalist will start calling the company\u2019s press service for confirmation. Ordinary users can search the Google news section using the company name and the name of the product \u2013 a journalist may have already done all the work for you. TruthTeller<\/a> is a useful service based in the US and supported by The Washington Post \u2013 journalists check the most interesting and most popular alleged quotes made by politicians and other information sources.<\/p>\n Another useful trick which is worth putting into practice when using Google News Search is sorting search results by date. It immediately identifies the first source of the news, and you can decide just how trustworthy that source is.<\/p>\n Fake Quotes<\/strong><\/p>\n A relatively harmless but particularly widespread online phenomenon is fake quotes attributed to famous people.<\/p>\n Searching for them using the text in the quotes is no good \u2013 you\u2019ll find numerous copies and nothing that helps identify the original author. Instead, search a collection of quotes of the person in question.<\/p>\n Fake Images<\/strong><\/p>\n Verifying the validity of an image is harder than it is for text. You could simply not bother and just check the text that accompanies the image, or you can use an image search service. The most popular are Google search by image<\/a> and TinEye<\/a>.<\/p>\n By loading an image saved from a social network, you can see what other sites it has appeared on. For example, the first results from both TinEye and Google for the popular post about the \u201cworld\u2019s biggest tortoise\u201d trace the image back to the Japanese film Gamera the Brave.<\/p>\n For images showing recent events (as was the case with the impressive photos of Hurricane Sandy), this method may not work, and a detailed analysis of the image may be necessary. Searching for fakes among images is essentially a new forensic science, and even the basics are quite difficult \u2013 you can read more about it at the Scientific American<\/a>. It requires a bit of practice to spot irregularities in the illumination of objects in a picture, slight differences in the tone and texture of a person\u2019s body, paying attention to reflections in eyes, noticing potential join lines at the edges of objects. The dedicated site PSkiller<\/a> can automate some of these things by analyzing images and spotting the tell-tale signs that a picture has been doctored using Photoshop.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n