10 ways to identify fake website or source of information
Internet: The magical world of our generation where information is one click away irrespective of its spatial location. All types of information legal or illegal is available on different websites. For readers/viewers who are developing their critical thinking based on what they read may not be affected by illegal content but it can be affected by wrong content. With increasing use of social media in sharing the information, many users limit themselves to the information shared by other people in their circle. The news feed they see depends on the type of individuals in their circle. In this process, users tend to forget their capabilities that they can search other sources and verify the information being shared. Sometimes it is hard to differentiate between a reliable and an unreliable source. This blog is focused on identifying reliable online sources or websites.
An educational information is always useful irrespective of the kind of source it is coming from. The most common opinion forming content (real/fake/morphed) is served under news and current affairs. If the content is distributed as an image/media, it is easy to identify if it is real or fake. You can learn these 10 basic techniques to identify fake or morphed photos. Before believing on any information available on the internet (which can have some consequences on our society), you should verify the source and its reliability.
With no prior knowledge of programming or website development, creating a website is the easiest job with few clicks these days. It usually takes 5-10 mins to buy domain, setup a website and make it live. The owner of the website just need to write/upload the content without worrying about its design, arrangement and server side management. Online content creation is easy and cheap. And it does not cost anything for a user to read. Imagine the amount of manpower, setup and communication it require in the print media. Can you think of anyone starting a print media to spread fake information, when users have to pay to read. Yes, print media does make mistakes and they correct/verify them from time to time. If they are printing something wrong, an action can be taken against them because they can be traced. But, it is hard to trace and punish a person spearheading information online; he/she might be located in different continent. So, if you are reading something on internet, make sure you read it from a reliable source.
Websites on News/Media/Current Affairs
Here comes the most difficult and analytical job. There exists multiple websites serving news content (looks like news/media websites) online. All types of articles are available on the web including masala/entertainment, real, fake and morphed news. It might be fine to share an (opinion) article as news but what if the article is misleading or missing facts and readers start believing in misleading information. More dangerously, if readers don't know about the person or company of these articles. Should these articles be believed? It is almost missing or difficult to find about authors/company information in most of the fake/morphed news websites. There are ways to find owner (or company associated) of the website and track them down. It is not always hard to find real information, you just need to spend a little bit of time. In the amount of time (including judiciary) it takes to initiate an action against a fake website, there can be 100 more similar website made available.
It is easy to create file menu on a website which looks like a regular news website. Following is a screenshot of menu from timesofindia.indiatimes.com
If you are really curious about the owners of the website, best way is to check About Us section. This is either included in main menu or at the bottom of the website. About Us on the times of India website will lead you to the http://timesinternet.in which shows organizational structure of The Times Group. Next question, is the company "The Times Group" really exist? You will find the answer to this question in this blog.
(1) About Us (or Contact Us or Introduction)
This usually introduce the purpose of the website, the company or person's details owning the website and sometimes key people working for the company or website. Look at following About Us from two different online news portals.
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| About Us from nationaldastak.com (http://www.nationaldastak.com/about/) |
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| About Us from postcard.news (http://postcard.news/postcard-news-about-us/) |
After reading the About Us description on above two portals, you may find which one is reliable and which one is not. Above images are given for demonstration purpose only (I don't mean to praise one or the other). If there is a known team/company/person working behind a website, they can be held accountable.
(2) Owner of the Website
Finding the website owner information is one click away. Every domain name provider website has a tab on WHOIS (or directly go to https://www.whois.com/whois/ and type the website). Owner information entered at the time of domain name registration can be seen publicly. It is a different issue if the information is wrong or not updated with time. In next section, I will explain the way to find the information about a company. If a website is owned by a company whose WHOIS information is masked, registered company can be searched in the government database.
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WHOIS information for indiatimes.com
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If one pays more, website owner information can be masked with some other company details. Domain By Proxy is the major website owner masking company. Only email is visible if an owner chose to mask their details. But the email is not a correct way to identify a person. As a normal user, it might be hard to find masked information, but as a government or inquiring agency, it is feasible. As you can see, team information is not available on About Us page of postcard.news and the website owner information is also masked. Where as owner information of indiatimes.com is publicly available (WHOIS information for nationaldastak.com is also masked). I would call it a ghost website if not a single clue (person/company details) is found either from About Us or WHOIS.
One can say that a website can produce fake company name on About Us page and hide all the personal details of ownership of the website from WHOIS.
(3) Owner of the Company
All the registered company in India can be searched on government database. If company is not based in India, look for respective country websites and most importantly the company website (A company might own multiple companies). For a registered company in India, go to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs website (mca.gov.in) and look for the company meta data tab (or open: http://www.mca.gov.in/mcafoportal/viewCompanyMasterData.do). Type the name of the company (or key words) in popup window after clicking on search button and select the company name from query results. Company LLPN field will be automatically fetched, fill the captcha and submit. It will show company details.
Following picture is a screen shot of Dastak Media Pvt Ltd (owner of nationaldastak.com) extracted from mca.gov.in)
If you don't find the company name, this means it doesn't not exist and a ghost website is found. There can be multiple reasons for creating ghost websites including sponsorship from some party or earning money through Google AdSense. Neither of this might be wrong but in the process, some innocent minds are spoiled by feeding them with wrong information.
Blogs
This article falls under the blog category. Most of the internet users are familiar with blogs and ways to identify them. Articles written as blogs are counted as opinion (they are not reporting) and its up to the readers if they agree, disagree, like, or dislike the article.
(4) Subdomain Blogs
These blogs are very popular as they are free. These are hosted on popular blogging sites and have subdomain links (like this blog) such as https://a-roshan.blogspot.com. Here, blogspot.com is a blogging site and a-roshan is the subdomain. Another common wordpress blogging subdomain looks like www.xxyyzz.wordpress.com, where xxyyzz is the subdomain.
(5) Blogging Site
Some of the users go beyond the subdomain and buy their own website. They can manage their site as a blog site or any other site. Identifying such sites is easy, just go by person profile available on the website. There are other blogging sites too, where users submit their articles on the web (no subdomain) under different categories available on the web. www.medium.com is an example of this type.
(6) Microblogging
Social media updates are counted as microblogging. Some social media sites allow limited characters (e.g. 140 on twitter) and some unlimited text such as Facebook. So, everyone is a blogger now. Use these hacks to identify if an account is real or fake.
(7) Blogs on Media Websites
In order to increase public participation, most of the media websites allow users to publish their blogs on the websites (this is similar to editorial page on a news paper). Some websites allow publication after moderation and some allow direct publication. This is usually published under Blogs or Opinion section. Identifying articles under these sections is not hard, and sometimes publishers add a note about the views presented in the article at the end of the article.
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| Menu categories on online media websites. Blogs or Opinion tab can be seen here |
Blogs are a unique way of communication. All kind of ideas and experiences are shared on blogs. You will see blogs from normal people to a celebrity, but believing or not believing in blogs depends on you. Its not always making money using AdSense on blogs, some of the people are really passionate about writing and they are good at it. One can be completely right or wrong in presenting their ideas. At the end, you know the writer and you can directly communicate with them.
Print Media
As compared to sharing content on internet, creation of print media by some anonymous person is rare as it require money (more than online), print facility, manpower and distributors. There are existing companies and real people associated with print media. And finding them is easy.
(8) Printing Press
Most of the print media include the details about printing facility where newspaper was printed. If the company information is not available on internet, search for printing facility information and inquire about the contact details of the printed article. Not all of the print media have their own printing equipments and they use third party printing facilities.
(9) Company Information
Office of The Registrar of Newspaper (rni.nic.in) is the place where you search government database of registered newspapers. Type the complete title or keyword and press search. All the registered, renewed and canceled titles can be seen on this website. Titles can also be sorted out based on region and language.
If you find a media company which is not registered on rni.nic.in, then most likely it is fake/illegal and report to their office.
(10) News Corrections
There have been cases, when print media published fake, morphed articles, but at the same time they also published an apology and corrections in the next edition. It is a different issue that correction did not gets the same space and page number. It might be ignored by majority of readers because of its size and priority. Next time you see a correction which didn't get similar space as compared to original article, I would recommend to contact Press Council of India or concerned authority to address the issue.
I'm not sure about ghost websites or ghost print media; as it may take longer time to enquire about the details and initiate any action against them. There is a complaint mechanism for registered press members in Press Council of India (presscouncil.nic.in) but the council may not entertain on a complaint against a non-registered media. Why should they? Such ghost media can only be suppressed if we stop believing in them. They exists because some of us fall prey to their content.
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