How to Detect a Hoax

How do you detect and avoid a hoax? It’s difficult, and the better the hoax the tougher it is to detect. There is not a single “answer” or “trick” or “secret.”

A magician writing in a Cold-War era manual for international spies explained that “practically every popularly held opinion on how to deceive, as well as how to safeguard one’s self from being deceived, is wrong in fact as well as premise.” The hand is not quicker than the eye and “there is never a single secret for any trick.” Rather, “a trick does not fool the eye but fools the brain.” Thus, the antidote involves careful observation, thinking, and analysis. We must become aware of human limitations and perpetrator methods and we must employ thoughtful counter-strategies and helpful tools.

Awareness of Your Own Human Limitations

Perpetrators exploit the weaknesses of human thinking and observation. First, there are social limitations. We seem to have an innate sense of trust; we assume that what we experience is true. The existence of society is predicated on our trust that parents are kind, leaders are just, and neighbors are friendly. Because it is not humanly possible or feasible to verify everything, our minds create shortcuts for evaluating the world around us—we trust if it comes with experts and endorsements, if it contains scientific formulas or graphs or photos of scientists, if we feel pleasant emotions.

We also possess mental limitations. We are more likely to remember things that have a memorable story or pattern. Our minds tend to imbue patterns with intention and meaning, and we can end up seeing patterns or messages in randomness (pareidolia). Our minds prefer information that is easier to process—whether because of high contrast, rhyming, or simplicity. We remember things that align with what we already believe (confirmation bias) and ignore information that runs counter to our existing beliefs (motivated reasoning). Increased familiarity with things gives us the illusion of validity (illusory truth effect). Once we form inaccurate beliefs, they become heard to eradicate, even after clear correction (continuing influence effect). Sometimes, we cannot see our own incompetence (Dunning-Kruger Effect).

Awareness of Perpetrator Methods

Researchers have identified several common principles employed by perpetrators in a variety of schemes. They can distract you into focusing on something that grabs your interest so that you miss everything else (common in magic tricks). They count on social compliance, or the way that most people are trained by society not to question authority (employed in social engineering or phishing). The herd principle describes the way that most people follow everyone around them (used in auctions with a planted bidder or in social media aliases). The dishonesty principle expects that each person has a little larceny on the inside (people may be willing to rationalize the purchase stolen goods if they are a “good deal”). The kindness principle accepts that most people are fundamentally nice and willing to help (exploited in scam requests for disaster aid). Con artists exploit need and greed, because our deeper drives, moods, and pain shape what we really want (often paired with distraction). Finally, the time principle recognizes that people make worse choices under pressure (when presented with a “limited time offer”).

These general principles work with a variety of tactics. Perpetrators of hoaxes and scams might present fake experts and anonymous sources (such as non-traditional news outlets and amateur publications), appeal to ancient wisdom or alternative options (secret knowledge), deny the conclusiveness of evidence (“we can’t be sure”), seek only for evidence that supports their position (cherry picking), emphasize only strange things (anomaly hunting), present a large quantity of information (proof by verbosity), set criteria that no one could meet (impossible expectations), or change the requirements (moving the goalposts).

Thoughtful Counterstrategies

To avoid being tricked by a hoax or scam you will need more than common sense. You will need more than the usual simple tricks. You cannot simply trust websites that end in .org (hoaxers use them because most people trust them).

Sam Wineburg and the Stanford History Education Group recommend a practice they call “lateral reading.” Instead of down a webpage to review its official-looking logo or domain name, you should learn to leave the page and look around it on the internet. Open up a new browser window and search for situational details—Who hosts the site? What can you find from other sources about the site owner? Who links to the site? (Here are curriculum materials for teaching these skills to students)

After you’ve determined something is a hoax, how do you persuade others who still believe? You must provide factual alternatives (not just vague statements). You must refute misinformation by explaining why the myth is false and why the facts are true (not just state that something is incorrect). Where possible, present information in a way that affirms a person’s worldview and is congruent with their values. And foster healthy skepticism.

Tools and Resources

Here are our top 10 free online tools for detecting hoaxes:

1. Snopes.com fact checks urban legends, hoaxes, and folklore.
2. Hoax-Slayer exposes email and social media hoaxes as well as current internet scams.
3. The Internet has an official registry in which to search for a website’s owner and creator.
4. Google’s reverse image search can be used to find where an image appears elsewhere on the web.
5. Tin Eye searches the web for images and offers a “compare” feature that highlights any differences caused by cropping, resizing, skewing, or other manipulation.
6. FotoForensics reveals if an image has been modified.
7. Jeffrey’s Image Metadata Viewer reveals information about the creation of specific digital images.
8. Amnesty International has created the YouTube Data Viewer that reveals when a video was originally posted and extracts image thumbnails that can be reverse searched
9. WolframAlpha offers a powerful knowledgebase for checking all kinds of information
10. Wikimapia hosts maps with all kinds of interesting geographic information

After you’ve identified a hoax, use these tools to analyze it!