Tag Archives: missing

A tweet with a picture of a plane’s cockpit underwater claims: “Malaysia Airplane MH370 that disappeared 9 years ago has been found under ocean with no human skeleton [sic]. The plane had 239 passengers on board.”

The tweet has over 15,000 shares. It’s also been shared on Facebook.

But the image is not of the Malaysia Airlines plane that went missing in 2014. Instead, it shows a Lockheed Martin L1011 Tristar aircraft that was purposely sunk off the coast of Jordan in 2019 to create an artificial reef and diving site.

The photo appears to be a screenshot of a video of that plane published on Instagram by a diving centre in Aqaba, Jordan, near the site of the wreck.

Other videos of the aircraft taken from different angles show that it is the sunken Lockheed…

A Facebook post shared to a buy and sell Facebook group called “Aber swap shop” claiming an autistic boy called Brandon has gone missing with his family dog uses images taken in 2019, which we previously wrote about after they were used in a nearly-identical set of hoax posts.

The post says: “HELP!!!  #aber MS My son Brandon Smith took off this morning with our dog hank. He is autistic and has been missing for eight hours if anyone sees him please PM me please re-post on any sites.I already contacted police. [sic]”

As we’ve previously explained, the pictures used in the posts have been circulating online since 2019, and reportedly show a boy in the US being reunited with his dog, Piper, which had been found after going missing for over a fortnight. 

They…

Hoax posts shared to local Facebook groups claim that an autistic boy named Brandon Smith has gone missing with his dog Hank. 

Full Fact has seen an example of this post in a community “what’s on” group in Eastbourne, East Sussex, but it has also appeared in groups in the US such as one in the town of Morganton, North Carolina. 

The full text of the post says: “My son Brandon Smith took off this morning with our dog hank. He is autistic and has been missing for eight hours if anyone sees him please PM me please re-post on any sites.I already contacted police [sic].” 

Alongside the text is a professional-looking picture of a young boy sitting on grass, holding a small white dog on a lead. 

This picture is not of a missing boy—it’s from a set of stock…

Hoax posts claiming that an elderly man with dementia named Martin Jones has gone missing with his dog have been shared on social media.  

The posts say: “My uncle Mr Martin Jones aged 79 drove out with our dog Baxter and he hasn’t returned. He doesn’t know where he’s going, he has dementia. There is a silver alert activated on him. Please help bump this post so we can get him home safely.” 

We have written about fake appeals for the whereabouts of “Martin Jones” before. The picture used in the posts, of a man wearing a dark jacket and cap holding a small dog, is taken from a post thanking a local volunteer for a community group in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

The post is likely to have originated in the US as it makes a reference to a “silver alert”—a…