Over the past year The Healthy Americas Foundation worked with The Carter Center and the creators of the comic strip "Baldo" to develop "Real or Synthetic?" These materials explain how information people receive is meant to engage them quickly. These resources are available in English and Spanish.
The challenge is not to click, especially when something quickly grabs your attention. Here are specific cues to look for.
1. When you have a strong and immediate emotional response to the content or an image. False information often relies on strong emotional appeals, to get people to believe it and share it. A story or claiming vista is often specifically designed to make you angry, scared, or overly excited. Moreover, it is increasingly easy to create images that are not real and increasingly difficult to detect when they are not real.
2. The sender asks for personal information or money. They may not ask the first time they contact you, but do so after a series of interactions when they have earned your confidence.
3. The sender claims to have been referred by someone you know. Contact the person, preferably by phone, and check.
4. Promises a quick solution to a problem.
5. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is not true. There are many fact-checking websites and organizations that verify the accuracy of claims and news stories. Websites like Snopes.com, FactCheck.org, and Politifact.com can help you determine if a piece of information is true. For Spanish go to https://factchequeado.com
