Many online hoaxes and scams spreading through social media platforms, especially through WhatsApp are always at Fact Crescendo’s watch. We have debunked several spam messages circulating on WhatsApp.
Few days back, we came across a WhatsApp message, which claimed that World Health Organization (WHO) has decided to provide 500-dollar benefit. However, our investigations revealed that it was just another hoax.
Social Media Posts:
One of our readers sent us the following message, requesting to verify its authenticity. The forwarded message bears the name of World Health Organization along with WHO official logo.
We noticed several similar posts being shared among Facebook users as well along with the caption “Free opportunity to get a chance of 300$ with in second”
Fact Check
First, we inspected that the website link provided along with the viral WhatsApp message and noticed that the link did not belong to any official World Health Organization domain (who.int). We urge you not to proceed further to such unverified links which are most often fraud disguised as genuine offers.
We proceeded only for verification purposes and upon clicking on the link; it redirected us to an external website, which read “Congratulations… You have been selected to benefit from the support provided by the World Health Organization for 500 dollar”
In order to avail this offer the external website link had posted three questions relating to business type, marital status and age range as seen below.
We answered the three questions and proceeded. A message popped up stating that after considering our answers, the amount granted was 300 dollars, and requested to share the viral message on 5 groups or 15 friends on WhatsApp in order to obtain the withdrawal code.
We shared the message among 15 contacts, reiterating again only for verification purposes, and even though it appeared 100% completed, we never received any code. Below are the screenshots for the same.
In order to confirm if there was any form of financial support as such provided by WHO, we contacted WHO’s Sri Lanka office via email. WHO confirmed that it is a false claim and that there was “no such financial support provided by the WHO” and also urged us to take the necessary action to inform and protect the public from such spam message.
Conclusion
From our investigation, we can confirm that the message being shared on WhatsApp and other messaging platforms claiming that World Health Organization is giving 500 dollars is a spam message. We request the public not to provide your personal data to such unverified external websites.
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