New Delhi (Team Vishvas). We received a message on Vishvas.com’s Whatsapp number, “Add your family’s name to the list of Prime Minister’s housing scheme and get 2.5 lakh rupees relief amount”. The person who sent the message, asked us whether this news was correct or not. The message was accompanied with a URL. In our investigation we found that this message is completely false.
Claim
The message was in Hindi. The translation is “Add your family’s name to the list of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana and get Rs. 250000 thousand rupees for relief, then you cannot say that Modi has not given us house. It is a chance now, the last date for applying is 31 March 2019. Apply from here 👇👇 👉🏼 https://bit.ly/2XgA8Tx
🙏🏼 Requests: 🙏🏼 Please share this message with your friends, relatives and all the groups so that all the poor families can get the benefit of this scheme.”
Investigation
To begin our investigation, we first clicked on the URL shared in the message. It landed us on a page that asked us to fill a form. It asked us for our name, Father’s name, mobile number, pin code, permanent address and our state’s information.
The Next page asked us to share the message with 10 other people on Whatsapp. We shared the message with 10 people on whatsapp.
Next it asks you to ‘Download the application below and complete your order’. The app was ‘Best Status-share.com’. Best Status-share.com is an app that provided whatsapp jokes, status and wish cards etc.
How to recognize that the message you got is clickbait or fake?
1) If you are asked to forward the message to a number of poeple
2) If you are asked to download an app
3) If you are asked for your bank details
4) If you are asked for money in the name of processing fee
5) If you are asked for personal information
Our suspicions started when we were asked to share this message with 10 people and it became evident in the end when we were asked to download an app. Obviously this is a clickbait message to promote an app.
To further strengthen our investigation, we searched the Prime Minister housing scheme on Google and found that this scheme comes under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. We talked to the media consultant of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Neha Sharma. She told us that “this message is fake. You do not have to register anywhere to take advantage of the Prime Minister’s housing scheme. The aim of the PM housing scheme is that everyone should get a permanent house. Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) is an initiative of the Government of India, in which affordable housing will be provided to the urban poor. The features of the Prime Minister’s Housing Scheme are that the Government will provide interest subsidy of 6.5% on the housing loan taken by the beneficiaries for the period of 20 years under the Credit Link Subsidy Scheme (CLSS) from the beginning of the loan. You can get formal subsidy on interest by formal loans from commercial banks, housing finance companies, regional rural banks, state cooperative banks, urban cooperative banks, small financial banks, non-banking financial companies etc. No money is sent to the account of the people”.
Conclusion: In our investigation we found that the message being shared is fake. This message is being spread to promote a mobile app. This message has nothing to do with the Prime Minister’s Housing Scheme.
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