Tag Archives: fake

An apparent US government memo approving $8 billion worth of aid to Israel is fake.

A screenshot shared on Facebook shows a Presidential memo dated “October 07, 2023” which reads, in part “I hereby delegate the Secretary of State the authority under section 506(1)(a) of the FAA to direct the drawdown of up to $8 billion in defense articles and services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training, to provide assistance to Israel”.

No such memo appears on the White House website, where Presidential actions are published, or on archived versions of the website from 7 October.

NBC News has reported that a White House representative has confirmed the document circulating online is fake, with Reuters Fact Check also reporting that it is…

More than 13,000 people have shared a Facebook post claiming to offer a giveaway for two houses, which people can enter by commenting on the post and sharing it, as well as liking the page that published it. 

The post features a number of pictures of the interior and exterior of a large single-storey house, and says: “THIS September #We have two beautiful House [sic] which cannot be sold as they have some minor dents and scratches. Since it’s still in perfect condition, we decided to give it away to two of you before September 17th!!!  ‪

“To‪ par‪ti‪ci‪p‪at‪e‪:

“1 -‪ ‪S‪h‪ar‪e 2 – Co‪‪‪‪m‪ment: Done‪ 3 – Li‪‪‪‪ke ou‪‪r p‪‪‪age [sic].”

But this isn’t a real giveaway. A reverse-image search shows that…

A post advertising Wilko products at heavily discounted prices has been shared on Facebook. 

But these offers have nothing to do with the retailer, which fell into administration in August putting around 12,000 jobs at risk, with administrators telling Full Fact the websites sharing these offers are “not genuine”. 

The post says: “We have to clean up the remaining 8000+ products in the warehouse! !

“To thank everyone for your continued companionship and support, the lowest price during clearance is only £1.9!

“Don’t miss the store closing offer [sic].” 

It also features pictures of products supposedly available at very low prices, such as a suitcase set for £7.99 and an airfryer for £7.35. 

Although the Facebook page sharing the offer is not called…

Filipinos shared an online post claiming that Meta, the American multinational company operating Facebook (FB), launched a new ad campaign optimization tool powered by artificial intelligence (AI) called MetaAI. This is fake.

The Aug. 24 post by FB page Meta.Ai carries a link to a website where users are baited into downloading and installing a Windows program infected with a computer virus called Trojan. 

VERA Files has reached out to Meta but the company has yet to issue a statement about this.

This bogus post used the name of Meta AI, an academic research laboratory under Meta which has produced AI-based projects such as videos generated from text and speech recognition.

Meta offers application programming interfaces (APIs) as well as a set of AI-based tools…

We have seen a number of fake headshots of former president Donald Trump spread online, following his surrender in the US state of Georgia on charges of plotting to overturn the state’s election results. Mr Trump has denied any wrongdoing and described the case against him as a “travesty of justice”.

One image shared on social media was likely created using an AI image generator and has been spreading since at least April.

One major giveaway is the jumbled letters behind him—AI often struggles to correctly recreate text, resulting in garbled words in some AI-generated images. 

Mr Trump posted his real mugshot on Twitter, now known as X, with the words “Election interference” and “Never surrender!”

The genuine mugshot was also released to media