All posts tagged: hoax

Conspiracy theorist ‘perfectly entitled’ to believe Manchester Arena attack was ‘elaborate hoax’, lawyer says | UK News

Conspiracy theorist ‘perfectly entitled’ to believe Manchester Arena attack was ‘elaborate hoax’, lawyer says | UK News

Published by Sam

A conspiracy theorist being sued by two survivors of the Manchester Arena bombing is “perfectly entitled” to believe the deadly attack was an “elaborate hoax”, his lawyer has told a court. Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve, then 14, were among the hundreds of people injured when 22-year-old Salman Abedi detonated a homemade bomb at an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017. Mr Hibbert was paralysed from the waist down, while his daughter suffered a severe brain injury in the attack, which killed 22 people. They are suing self-styled journalist Richard Hall for alleged harassment and breaches of data protection laws in a civil trial at the High Court in London. Mr Hall has claimed that the attack was faked by government agencies using “crisis actors” and has published a book and videos claiming the bombing was a “hoax” – as well as “secretly filming” Miss Hibbert and her mother outside their house. Image: Martin Hibbert suffered 22 wounds from shrapnel in the attack. Pic: Cloud Force Marketing/Sam Manton/PA Jonathan Price, representing the Hibberts, said …

First-ever UK ‘swatting’ sentence passed after man shot in face by armed unit due to hoax call | UK News

First-ever UK ‘swatting’ sentence passed after man shot in face by armed unit due to hoax call | UK News

Published by skeptic

A British video gamer who faked a hostage situation leading to another man suffering life-changing injuries after armed units were tricked into shooting him has been sentenced in the first case of its kind in the UK. Robert Walker-McDaid, 28, from Coventry was one of the men involved in this “swatting” incident in February 2015. The term means making a hoax call of a serious crime to emergency services to incite panic and instigate the deployment of an armed response unit (SWAT team) to neutralise a perceived threat. Zachary Lee, of Catonsville, Maryland, had met Walker-McDaid while playing video games and messaged him saying he needed “someone swatted”. The victim was Tyran Dobbs, and Lee shared his address with Walker-McDaid. Walker-McDaid then called a Maryland terrorism hotline posing as Mr Dobbs, explaining he was armed and was holding three people captive, plus he had several bombs readied. He reported the first hostage would be “executed within 15 minutes” unless he received $15,000 (£12,000) in cash. Shot in the face The SWAT team rushed to the …

Aaron Rodgers, RFK Jr.’s Potential VP Pick, Allegedly Said Sandy Hook Was a Hoax

Aaron Rodgers, RFK Jr.’s Potential VP Pick, Allegedly Said Sandy Hook Was a Hoax

Published by skeptic

Earlier this week, we learned that Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers is in the running to be Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate. And now, we’ve incidentally learned another thing about the football player: that he has allegedly claimed that the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, which left 20 children and 6 adults dead, was a hoax. CNN reports that at the 2013 Kentucky Derby, Rodgers told journalist Pamela Brown that the massacre was an inside job by the government and that the media was covering up the true story. Asked by Brown for evidence Rodgers allegedly “began sharing various theories that have been disproven numerous times,” including ones that got conspiracy theorist Alex Jones sued, like that the shooting was staged and the first responders were actually “crisis actors.” (In 2022, a jury ordered Jones to fork over $965 million for his lies, a debt which he has yet to pay.) According to Brown, Rodgers said there were government operatives in the woods by the school. In addition to Brown, another individual—who CNN granted anonymity—said that …

No, Gmail Isn’t Being Shut Down: It’s Just a Hoax

No, Gmail Isn’t Being Shut Down: It’s Just a Hoax

Published by skeptic

Key Takeaways Google is not shutting down Gmail, despite a viral hoax claiming so. Google quickly denied the fake news that Gmail is being sunsetted. Gmail remains safe, with no danger of its 1.5 billion+ users losing access to their emails. If you have seen the “news” that Google is sunsetting Gmail, don’t panic: it isn’t true. It’s just a dumb hoax that has gone viral on social media, forcing Google to deny the claim. Why Do People Think Gmail Is Shutting Down? On February 22, 2024, a screenshot of an email started spreading around the web like wildfire. The email claims that Google is sunsetting Gmail on August 1, 2024. One of those who shared the screenshot was Chris Bakke, who claimed to be the SVP of Product at Google. Alongside the official-looking email announcement, he recounted a story about how, due to a miscommunication, Gmail was going away for good. None of this is true, obviously. Google HAS sunsetted the Basic HTML version of Gmail, meaning everyone will be forced to use the …

An elaborate AI death hoax spread fake news about me online

An elaborate AI death hoax spread fake news about me online

Published by skeptic

(Photo illustration by Jim Cooke / Los Angeles Times; Photos via Getty Images) When I died the other day, no one really noticed. That is, aside from a few alarmed members of my family. “The event,” as I now call it, unfolded one morning last month as I was racing out the door to a meeting. My phone rang. “De-De-Debbie, hi,” my dad said, nearly out of breath. “Listen: please DO NOT BE ALARMED by what I am about to send you!” That got my attention. “It’s an” — he paused for dramatic effect — “an obituary.” “Oh, my God, for who?” I said, putting down my purse. “You.” “What?” “There’s a rumor going around the World Wide Web,” he said, as if it were 1997, “that you died. Your obituary — it’s going viral internationally!” He’d heard about it from my aunt, who gets updates from Google whenever my name appears online. I immediately called her. “I got an alert. It linked to your obit,” she said. Then: “They said some really nice things …

Ozzy Osbourne responds to online death hoax: ‘I’m not dead’

Ozzy Osbourne responds to online death hoax: ‘I’m not dead’

Published by skeptic

Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free A disgruntled Ozzy Osbourne was forced to debunk reports of his demise, after stumbling across his own image in an “in memoriam” video online. The Black Sabbath frontman, 75, can be heard in the latest episode ofThe Osbournes podcast informing his family about the video. “I put it on and I died!” he said. “The thing on YouTube, which goes, ‘Celebrities Who Have Died Today,’ and there’s a picture of me.” Osbourne then referenced Monty Python and the Holy Grail, joking: “I’m not dead. I’m not really dead… just a little flesh wound.’” “I’m not dead,” he continued. “I’m not going any-f****ing-where and I’m going to go do some more gigs before I’m finished anyway.” Osbourne’s son, Jack, saw a positive side to the attempt at rumour-spreading, commenting: “What’s been really good about the podcast, I’ve noticed that whenever any of the s*** newspapers or whatever write, ‘Oh, …

Loose Women Star Has An Iconic Response To Death Hoax

Loose Women Star Has An Iconic Response To Death Hoax

Published by skeptic

For anyone keeping a tally, there’s been yet another death hoax against the Loose Women team. Earlier this month, Denise Welch was forced to share an update that she was alive and well after her Wikipedia page was hijacked with details of her death. Now, her colleague Linda Robson has been forced to “out” herself as alive after internet users spread false claims that the host and actress had died. The 65-year-old took to Instagram to denounce the death hoax in style by posting a video showing her “coming back to life” alongside Bernard Herrmann’s iconic theme from the 1960 film, Psycho. “Woke up to lots of messages and calls, apparently there has been a rumour I had passed away going around. You won’t get rid of me that easy!” wrote Robson as her caption. The fake news seemingly began to circulate on 17 December, with several meme pages perpetuating the update. Soon enough, fans were sharing the news and their condolences, causing the rumour to spread. Possibly prepared by Denise’s recent experience, Robson chose …

Fake Pentagon attack hoax shows perils of Twitter’s paid verification

Fake Pentagon attack hoax shows perils of Twitter’s paid verification

Published by skeptic

Surprising literally no one, the combination of paid blue checks and generative AI makes it all too easy to spread misinformation. On Monday morning, a seemingly AI-generated image of an explosion at the Pentagon circulated around the internet, even though the event didn’t actually happen. Within about half an hour, the image appeared on a verified Twitter account called “Bloomberg Feed,” which could very easily be mistaken for a real Bloomberg-affiliated account, especially since it had a blue check. That account has since been suspended. The Russian state-controlled news network RT also shared the image, according to screenshots that users captured before the tweet was deleted. Several Twitter accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers, like DeItaone, OSINTdefender and Whale Chart shared it. Even an Indian television network reported the fake Pentagon explosion. It is not immediately clear where this fake image and news story originated. Prime example of the dangers in the pay-to-verify system: This account, which tweeted a (very likely AI-generated) photo of a (fake) story about an explosion at the Pentagon, looks …