WhatsApp Fake Messages Could Soon be Detected by a New Indigenous App Developed by IIIT-D

To tackle rumours and identify fake news on Whatsapp and other social media platforms, Delhi based experts at an institute are developing an app which would identify fake news and signal you accordingly. The new service will aim at countering suspicious links.

IIITD’s App:

An associate professor of Computer Science at IIITD (Indraprastha Institute of Information and Technology, Delhi) by name Mr. Ponnurangam Kumaraguru is heading the team and is working to develop the application that would intend to check the authenticity of the messages that are sent on Whatsapp. This institute in Delhi is a University that focusses on Computer Science, Electronics, mathematics, Design, BioScience and Social science.

Kumaraguru said that they are working on collecting a large amount of data and have asked people to forward messages on the number – 9354325700 so that they can analyse the messages and check their authenticity to validate them, and that they can develop a model to filter out such messages. He also said that they can filter out by using the images or URL used in the messages.

It was further added that these messages will be colour coded so that their genuineness can be identified. The colours that will be used are green, yellow and red. The green colour will be used when the messages are authentic and genuine. The yellow colour will be used when the system is not able to identify the authenticity of the messages, and the red one will be used when the message will be a definite fake. The app is expected to be released in a couple of months.

Effects of Fake News:

Recently there have been incidents of mob fury in the states of Karnataka and Maharashtra. In Bidar Karnataka, an IT professional was beaten up by a mob on suspicions of being a child lifter. In Maharashtra, five men were lynched in Dhule on a similar suspicion. The first of such incident was reported in Jharkhand where seven men including two brothers were beaten to death on suspicions of child kidnapping. There have been a total of 27 such incidents throughout the country. The IT ministry of India has stated that misuse of such social media platforms like Whatsapp to spread such rumours was a matter of big concern.

Government’s Initiative:

Following these events, the Government of India has issued a strict warning to Whatsapp asking to curb such issues and that a messaging platform cannot refrain from its responsibility. Whatsapp also said that they do not take such incidents lightly and are already flagging messages as authentic or fake. They also mentioned that they have limited forwarding the messages to less than five people at once. Currently, the Government has issued another notice to Whatsapp saying that it may have to face legal consequences if it continues to remain a mute spectator.

As a corrective measure, Whatsapp is also testing on its beta version of the app with the “Suspicious links” tag. The feature would mark the link red if the app finds it suspicious. Whenever a user clicks on such links, a pop up would be enabled warning the user about the authenticity of the link.

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