Fake News: Hurricane Irma NOT Heading For Argentina, Brasil Or Paraguay

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk

Prank site 12minutos.com was used to post several articles falsely claiming hurricane Irma is heading for Argentina, Brasil or Paraguay next. Examples of the stories include:

El huracan irma llega a la argentina segun un meteorologo argentino con vientos de hasta 100 k/h

EL HURACÁN IRMA TOCARÍA SUELO ARGENTINO EN 12 HORAS JUSTO A LA HORA EN QUE COMIENZE EL NOTICIERO ASI QUE DESENCHUFE TODO Y AGARRESE DE LO QUE PUEDA

El huracán de irma se dirige a paraguay

Un meteorólogo advirtió a las autoridades de todo del paraguay tener mucha precaución y estar preparado para este fenomeno que se aproxima apartir de las 20 de la noche.

ALERTA MUNDIAL El Huracan IRMA se dirigue hacia el sur del del continente Americano como parada ARGENTINA, ;BRASIL Y PARAGUAY!!

En los ultimos momentos el Huracan irma a cambiado repentinamente su rumbo hacia al sur!! Haciendo estragos a su paso haciendo como parada BRASIL ARGENTINA Y PARAGUAY!! Se avisa a la poblacion alerta maxima en las proximas horas sus gobiernos daran el comunicado sin poder explicar el porque su cambio de direccion hacia paises del sur!!!

The actual path of Irma looks more like this, not getting anywhere remotely near to South America:

irmapath.png

(Source: noaa)

12minutos.com is a prank website where users can submit their own headline, description and photo to create realistic looking prank news articles.

react365.jpg

Users don't even need to upload their own image, there is a built-in search function that will pull an appropriate image from Google image search.

So don't fall for fake hurricane Irma warnings if they are coming from this site.


  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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