A couple of days back I got a SOS whatsapp message from my friend who runs a vegetable store in Panaji. ‘Dukrak rakses burgo jhala Sanguem’. A pig has given birth to a giant kid! The message was followed by a couple of photos and a video showing a new born child having features of a pig.
My loving, gentle, god fearing, almost ‘ajatshatru’ (foes she has none) friend was genuinely worried. She felt that the doomsday was coming. Before I could trace the origin of the image and write a series of messages to her about why she should not take such posts too seriously and how she can actually verify them, she had sent the message to a couple of hundred more people (most of them as naïve as her), who in turn were infested with the doomsday fear. By the end of the day I saw the same stuff so many times and on so many different groups and social media platforms that I too felt that I should start believing it. I just wanted to ensure that I was not left out. Jokes apart, by now we all know that at least 30 percent of what gets forwarded on social media follows the GIGO (garbage in garbage out) norm. But in our excitement to be the first in sharing exclusive information, indulging in couch social work etc we forward meaningless and blatantly fake messages without blinking an eyelid. And in the process, fall prey to and become carriers of a hidden agenda, purposefully, propagated by some miscreants. We also get fooled in the process!
Please remember that no one can make a fool out of you without your permission! Before falling prey to the bait and forwarding such messages, just hold on for a while.
If something is too vague to be true than it probably is false! Use the same technology that you use to forward content to cross check the contents. For instance, when you get such sensational and dramatic images which you quickly feel like forwarding, Stop! Google offers a very good and effective facility called reverse image search using which you can know more about the image. You can use it from your mobiles as well as desktops. It will help you to get to the root of the image in a giffy in most of the cases. Like the one I received as ‘Sanguem Rakos’ turned out to be creation of an Italian person.
For reverse checking images just go to https://images.google.com/The way you search on Google using words , here you can search using a picture. On your PC you can open your browser and go to https://images.google.com/. You can upload the image in question and you will get detail listing of all places where the picture has appeared before. And you will get to know the truth about the image (at least that the Rakes is not born in Sanguem will be immediately known.
For using google reverse image search on your mobile, Open your browser -> go to https://images.google.com/ -> Click on the 3 dots on the top right of the screen-> from the drop down choose desktop site and now you will get an option to upload the image in question and verify the same…
Will talk about how to check, verify and bust spam messages in some later posts!
Be alert , be safe!
(Note of caution “ If you happen to search for reverse image search in Google you will get some more third party links. My experience with many of them is not so great. So stick to images.google! )
” Sangita Naik
IT Professional
