Fact Check: Don’t fall for the viral message claiming schools distributing free laptops and tablets to students
The post with the link claiming free laptops and tablets for students is fake.
- By: Amanpreet Kaur
- Published: Aug 24, 2020 at 07:45 PM
- Updated: Aug 24, 2020 at 08:10 PM
New Delhi (Vishvas News): A viral post on social media claims that schools are distributing free laptops and tablets to the students to help support virtual learning. The post also contains a link to check eligibility. Vishvas News found that the viral message is fake and the link attached to the viral post is a clickbait.
Claim
A Facebook user “Freddy Suting” shared the screenshot of a Whatsapp message saying: “COVID-19: Schools distributes Free laptops and Tablets for at Hom… Schools has a distribution schedule for tablets and laptops to be given out to students to help support virtual learning this fall. To check eligibility visit https://education.google.bar “
The archived version of the post can be checked here.
Investigation
To confirm the viral claim we ran a search on Google using appropriate keywords, but couldn’t found any media report supporting the claim. However, there are some media reports related to the schools offering Laptops for online school lessons at home in England and other parts of the world.
The viral message also contains a link to check eligibility. When we tried to open this link it was not working. We checked this link through Whois Domain Tools and found that the domain was registered in the US and it was registered in the year 2014 which was later updated in November 2019. However, the information regarding the ownership of this domain is not available.
To know more about this link, Vishvas News sends this link to Ayush Bharadwaj, the Cyber expert. After analysing the link he confirmed to us that the link is just a clickbait and not the genuine link. This means that after even completing the registration process through this link, the user will not get any free laptop or tablet. Bharadwaj told Vishvas News that this type of Cybercrime is increasing these days, people collect the information of others to misuse it later or to do fraudulent activities. One should not click on such links.
The post is shared on Facebook by a user named Freddy Suting. When we scanned the profile of the user we found that he lives in Shilong, Meghalaya.
Conclusion: The post with the link claiming free laptops and tablets for students is fake.
- Claim Review : Schools are distributing free laptops and tablets to the students
- Claimed By : FB user: Freddy Suting
- Fact Check : False
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