A Fake Poll Website Shows Just How Crafty Kenyan Fake News Is Getting
It’s not just fake stories any more: we’re seeing whole fake websites popping up with fake surveys and bogus opinion polls.
Misinformation campaigns, by sophisticated #FakeNews strategists, continue to cast a shadow over Kenya’s fiercely contested elections.
A fake opinion poll released through a legitimate-looking website and circulated to Kenyan media in the name of public research company Ipsos, claimed that the country’s incumbent president and Jubilee Party candidate Uhuru Kenyatta had a popularity rating of 47%, ahead of his main opponent and National Super Alliance candidate Raila Odinga, who stood at 44%.
A careful look at the attachments sent with the survey press release shows that the data is actually a copy of the last survey that the “real” Ipsos sent on August 01. Even the date on the data file is unchanged. And, in fact, the survey itself does not mention a poll for the upcoming presidential election. It instead contains random data that was clearly taken other legitimate Ipsos surveys.
Whoever sent the bogus press release appear to have hoped that the cover letter in the email would be enough to get a unsuspecting journalist to publish the story. And, like the proverbial lie that travels around the world before the truth puts its shoes on, the poll was published as gospel by the Kenyan media. The news reports were only retracted after Ipsos issued a statement distancing themselves from the poll.
This isn’t the first time that fake poll data was used in an attempt to skew public perception around the election.
However, this is the most elaborate attempt yet, with a clear strategy use spoofed email addresses and entire fake sites to mimic the real Ipsos website, with links to a variety of legitimate Ipsos social media, including — ironically — an Ipsos tweet warning that the ipsoske.com site is fake.
Unless you look for potential red flags, it’s easy to mistake the fake ipsoske.com for the legitimate ipsos.com/ke. In fact, several links on the fake Ipsos site go to the real Ipsos page, such as the ‘About Us’ link.
Given the fact that it has an Ipsos logo, some official-looking corporate art, and a buzzword-laden ticker, it would be easy to believe that ipsoske.com is a legitimate site.
A look at the WhoIs data for the site shows that whoever is behind ipsoske.com has deployed WhoIsGuard, a a privacy protection service that prevents people from seeing the name, address, phone number and email address of the website owner when a Whois search is conducted. The page’s information shows an address and phone number in Panama instead.
Looking at the WhoIs data for the legitimate Ipsos site shows that it was registered in 1998, while ipsoske.com was registered on 22 September 2017.
As the purveyors of fake news grow increasingly sophisticated, newsrooms will have to deploy tools that they can use to detect foul play. At PesaCheck, we have deployed Check by Meedan to guide and keep track of our fact-checking processes.
By compelling whoever is checking on the claim in the newsroom to which such a story is sent to go through the five-step verification process developed by Meedan in collaboration with PesaCheck, the cracks immediately start to emerge.
By checking the site where the report allegedly came from, it is immediately apparent that the story was not published there, and a followup on the other questions makes it immediately apparent that the story lacks credibility.
As fake news becomes more pervasive, we need to be more aware of the stories that come our way as journalists, and to make sure that we can verify the claims that come our way.
Do you want us to fact-check something a politician or other public figure has said about public finances? Fill this form or write to us on any of the contacts below, and we’ll help ensure you’re not getting bamboozled.
This report was written by PesaCheck managing editor, Eric Mugendi.
PesaCheck, co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, is East Africa’s first fact-checking initiative. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of public services related to the Sustainable Development Goals, such as healthcare, rural development, and access to water and sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org
PesaCheck is a joint initiative of Code for Africa, through its local Code for Kenya chapter, and the International Budget Partnership (Kenya), in partnership with a coalition of local media organisations, with additional support from the International Center for Journalists(ICFJ).
